Epishev, Aleksei Alekseevich
Epishev, Aleksei Alekseevich
Born May 6 (19), 1908, in Astrakhan. Prominent Soviet party and military figure. General of the army (1962). Became a member of the CPSU in 1929. The son of a worker.
Epishev was an industrial worker and later did Komsomol and Party work. He joined the Soviet Army in 1930. In 1938 he graduated from the Military Academy of Mechanization and Motorization and became the party organizer for the Central Committee of the ACP(Bolshevik) at the Comintern Factory in Kharkov. From 1940 to 1943 he was first secretary of the Kharkov Oblast committee of the party, then first secretary of the Nizhnii Tagil’ city committee, deputy minister of medium machine building, and authorized representative of the Military Council at the Stalingrad Front during the battle of Stalingrad of 1942–43. In May 1943 he became a member of the Military Council of the Fortieth Army and later of the Thirty-eighth Army, armies that participated in the liberation of the Ukraine, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.
In May 1946, Epishev worked in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine as secretary for cadres. In 1950 he completed courses at the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the ACP(B). In 1950–51 and again in 1953–55 he was first secretary of the Odessa Oblast committee. From 1951 to 1953 he was deputy minister for state security of the USSR. From 1955 to 1961 he was the Soviet ambassador to Rumania and in 1961–62 to Yugoslavia. In May 1962 he became head of the Main Political Administration of the Soviet Army and Navy. He was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU at the Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-second Congresses of the Party. In November 1964 he became a member of the CPSU Central Committee. A delegate to the first, third, fourth, and sixth through eighth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, he has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Bogdan Khmel’nitskii First Class, the Order of the Patriotic War First Class, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, three Orders of the Red Star, six foreign orders, and medals.