Viktor Afanasyev (politician)

Viktor Grigoryevich Afanasyev (Russian: Ви́ктор Григо́рьевич Афана́сьев; 18 November 1922 – 10 April 1994) was a Soviet public figure, remembered for his work as a philosophy academic, politician, and news editor. Afanasyev was editor-in-chief (1974-1975) of the journal Kommunist and deputy editor (1968–1974) and editor-in-chief (1976–1989) of Pravda.

Moderately critical of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and still more so of rising independent politician Boris Yeltsin in his capacity as editor, Afanasyev was dismissed from his high position at Pravda after a period of falling circulation and a negative official reaction to the newspaper's highlighting Boris Yeltsin's troubles with alcohol during the Gorbachev administration in 1989 and spent the remaining half-decade of his life working for the national Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

Born in 1922 in Aktanysh in the Tatar ASSR (now Russia's Republic of Tatarstan) in 1922, Afanasyev joined the Red Army in 1940 and served with the Soviet paratroopers in the 1940s and World War II, remaining in the armed forces until 1953. He was awarded his first university degree for his independent completion of the required curriculum of the Chita Pedagogical Institute in Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai while still serving in the Soviet military.

Afanasyev first became a professional instructor upon leaving the Soviet Army in 1953 and continued concentrate his professional interest on teaching and administrative appointments in academia into the 1960s and 1970s. His appointments during this period included teaching as an instructor in Soviet Marxist theory at the Chelyabninsk Pedogagical Institute and a position with the philosophical branch of the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He authored a range of papers and books on philosophical subjects in the 1960s and 1970s. His dissertation for a Doktor nauk degree, a work concerned with issues pertinent to both philosophy and biology on a theoretical level, was accepted in 1964.

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