Zaveniagin, Avraamii Pavlovich

Born Apr. 1 (14), 1901, in Uzlovaia, in present-day Tula Oblast; died Dec. 31, 1956, in Moscow. Soviet state and party figure; twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1949 and 1954). Member of the CPSU from 1917.

The son of a locomotive engineer, Zaveniagin did party work in Tula and Riazan’ oblasts and then in the Donets Basin from 1918; he was secretary of the luzovka Okrug party committee. He graduated from the Mining Academy in 1930 and became director of the Institute for the Design of Ferrous Metallurgy Plants and deputy chief of the Central Administration of the Metallurgical Industry of the Supreme Council of National Economy. He directed the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine from 1933 to 1937, when he became first deputy people’s commissar of heavy industry. From 1938 he directed construction of the Noril’sk mining and metallurgical combine, which now bears his name, and be-came its chief when it was completed.

Zaveniagin’s government posts include deputy people’s commissar (deputy minister) of internal affairs of the USSR (1941-50), deputy minister of medium machine building of the USSR (1953-54), and vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and minister of medium machine building (from 1955). Zaveniagin was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee (CC) of the CPSU at the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Congresses of the CPSU and member of the CC at the Twentieth Congress; he was a deputy to the first and second convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Zaveniagin was awarded the State Prize of the USSR, six Orders of Lenin, and various medals; he is buried on Red Square at the Kremlin wall.