Ilichev, Leonid Fedorovich

Il’ichev, Leonid Fedorovich 

Born Mar. 2 (15), 1906, in Ekaterinodar, present-day Krasnodar. Soviet philosopher. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1962). Became a member of the CPSU in 1924.

Il’ichev graduated from the Communist University of the Northern Caucasus in 1930 and from the department of philosophy at the Institute of Red Professors in 1937. He worked as a teacher from 1930 to 1953. He also held the positions of executive secretary of the journal BoTshevik and the newspaper Pravda, editor in chief of the newspaper Izvestiia, and head of the press department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR from 1938 to 1958. Il’ichev headed the department of propaganda and agitation of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1958 to 1961. He was a secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1961 to 1965. He became the deputy minister of foreign affairs of the USSR in 1965.

Il’ichev wrote on dialectical and historical materialism, Soviet foreign policy, and international relations. His works include Onthe Role of Personality in History (1941), International Relationsand the Progress of Science and Technology (1958), and TheScientific Basis of the Direction of the Development of Society (1962). He was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1960 and has also received the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, five other orders, and various medals.