Gen. Yepishev, Ex-Political Chief of Soviet Forces, Dies

Gen. Alexei A. Yepishev, who was in charge of the political education of Soviet armed forces for 23 years, has died, the official news agency Tass reported.

Tass said Yepishev, who was replaced this summer apparently because of his health, died Sept. 15 at age 77 after a lengthy illness.

“The Soviet people and its armed forces have experienced a grave loss,” said the official obituary signed by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other top officials.

Yepishev headed the political directorate of the army, navy and air force from May, 1962, until July when he was replaced by Gen. Alexei D. Lizichev, 57, former commander of the political forces with Soviet troops in East Germany.

Yepishev began his career in 1926 as a district head in the Communist Youth League, the Komosomol, and joined the Communist Party in 1929.

A year later, he was drafted into the Red Army and graduated from the army’s Academy of Mechanization and Motorization in 1938.

Yepishev was wounded in action in World War II while helping liberate the Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia from Nazi occupation.

Yepishev’s obituary, read on the national evening television news, also said that he served in senior party and diplomatic posts between 1946 and 1962.

Yepishev survived Nikita S. Khrushchev’s 1956 denunciation of Josef Stalin to join Khrushchev on official delegations in the late 1950s. He was appointed ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1960.

He kept his armed forces political post after Khrushchev was ousted in 1964 and provided a major link between the ruling Communist Party and the Defense Ministry.