Lapin, Sergei

Lapin, Sergei Georgievich 

Born July 2 (15), 1912, in St. Petersburg. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the CPSU since 1939.

The son of a worker, Lapin graduated from the Higher Party School Under the Central Committee of the ACP(B) in 1942. From 1932 to 1940 he worked as a journalist in Leningrad and other areas in Leningrad Oblast. From 1942 to 1944 he served on the staff of the Central Committee of the ACP(B). Between 1944 and 1956, Lapin held various positions: he served as editor in chief of political broadcasting, deputy chairman of the Committee on Radiofication and Radio Broadcasting of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and head of a department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR.

Lapin served as the Soviet ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Austria from 1956 to 1960 and held the same post in China from 1965 to 1967. He was minister of foreign affairs of the RSFSR from 1960 to 1962 and deputy minister of foreign affairs of the USSR from 1962 to 1965. From 1967 to 1970 he was general director of the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. In 1970, Lapin was appointed chairman of the State Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for Television and Radio (since 1978, the State Committee of the USSR for Television and Radio). He was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1966.

Lapin was a deputy to the eighth through tenth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and has been awarded three orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and various medals.