Zasiadko, Aleksandr Fedorovich

Born Aug. 25 (Sept. 7), 1910, in Gorlovka, in present-day Donetsk Oblast; died Sept. 5, 1963, in Moscow. Soviet statesman, a high official of the coal industry, Hero of Socialist Labor (1957). Be-came a member of the CPSU in 1931.

A worker’s son, Zasiad’ko began his working career in 1924 as an apprentice metalworker at a railroad car and locomotive plant and became a repairman and then a fitter in mines in 1927. After graduating from the Donets Mining Institute in 1935, he held high positions in the Donbas and then in the Moscow Basin. From 1943 to 1947 he was deputy people’s commissar of the coal industry of the USSR and deputy people’s commissar for the construction of fuel enterprises. Zasiad’ko became minister of the coal industry for the western regions of the USSR in February 1947, minister of the coal industry of the USSR in January 1949, vice-chairman of the Gosplan (State Planning Committee) of the USSR in January 1958, and vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in March 1958. From 1960 to 1962 he was chairman of the State Scientific and Economic Council of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU at the Nineteenth and Twenty-second Party Congresses, he was a deputy to the second, fourth, fifth, and sixth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Zasiad’ko was awarded five Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and medals.