Kremlin Names Propagandist as Culture Minister
Vasily G. Zakharov, who was trained as an economist before he became a Communist Party propagandist in 1973, was named Saturday as the minister of culture.
He replaces Pyotr N. Demichev, a non-voting member of the ruling Politburo, who was appointed to the largely ceremonial post of first vice president last June.
Zakharov, 52, had been serving for a short time as second secretary of the Moscow party organization under Boris N. Yeltsin, who is also a non-voting member of the Politburo.
The official news agency Tass, which announced the selection, said it was approved by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal legislative body.
In 1973, he took the post as head of the Department of Propaganda and Agitation in the Leningrad region.
Ten years later, he was named first deputy director of the Department of Propaganda at the Communist Party Central Committee.
Only last March, however, was he named a member of the Central Committee, an inner circle of about 300 influential party leaders.
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