Mikhail S. Zimyanin; Former Pravda Editor in Chief

Mikhail S. Zimyanin, 80, a leading Communist Party official and editor in chief of Pravda during the Leonid Brezhnev era. He was one of the last Brezhnev stalwarts in a high Soviet government post, serving on the party secretariat until his retirement was announced “for health reasons” in January, 1987. Western news reports at the time--nearly two years into Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms--said he had been ousted. Zimyanin was born in Vitebsk, Belarus, in 1914. After graduating from the Mogilev Teachers Institute, he worked as a Communist Youth League official and then as chief of the league’s Belarussian branch. He became head of Belarus’ Communist Party in 1946. He was chief editor of Pravda, the official Communist mouthpiece, from 1965 until 1976, when he was appointed to the party’s secretariat. The secretariat executed policy formulated by the ruling Politburo. On May 1 in Moscow of lung and heart problems.