Peter Abrassimov

Peter Andreievitch Abrassimov
Peter Andreievitch Abrassimov (1983)
Born	Пётр Андреевич Абрасимов (1912-05-16)May 16, 1912 , Mogilev Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	16 February 2009 Moscow, Russia
Occupation	Diplomat Ambassador

Peter Andreievitch Abrassimov (1912–2009) was a Soviet war hero and politician who became a career diplomat. He served his country as ambassador successively in China, France, Poland and East Germany.

Abrassimov was born in , a recently expanded but still small village in the eastern part of Belarus. The village's economic importance had been much enhanced when the local land-owner agreed to the erection of a station along the new railway line, which had opened in 1902, linking Vitebsk, Žlobin and Orsha to the rapidly expanding rail network of the Russian Empire (which included Belarus). Peter Andreievitch's father was a farmer who fought in the First World War and in the ensuing Civil War that followed it in the Russian Empire. He was killed in fighting near Orsha while a member of a Red Guard battalion, leaving his widow to bring up Peter and his sister. In 1933 Abrassimov's own specialty had become the electro-technical industrial sector. By 1939, however, he was attending the Belarusian State University in Minsk, studying History.

It was only in 1940, as the worst of the Stalinist purges were coming to an end, that he joined the Communist Party. Till 1941 Abrassimov worked in government and trades union institutions, after which he became an officer in the Red Army and, during the Great Patriotic War, an officer in the Belorussian partisan movement which at the time was operating behind German lines with approximately 35,000 men. By the end of the war he had earned four Soviet military medals. Between 1946 and 1952 he served as permanent representative of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic Ministerial Council in the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. In this position he worked directly under Alexei Kosygin and was able to preside over a period of strong economic recovery for Belarus, with the establishment of tractor and automobile plants as well as the creation of major agricultural enterprises. He subsequently became first deputy president of the Belorussian Council of Мinisters and Secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee. At the same time he resumed his studies in History at Minsk University.