1. Alexei Yepishev served as the Chief of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy from 1962 to 1985.
16 Facts About Alexei Yepishev
1. 2.
In 1930, Yepishev joined the Red Army, where he underwent commanders' training in the following year and served as a political officer in the Tank Corps.
3.
On 11 May 1945, shortly after the German capitulation, Alexei Yepishev moved back to his former office in the 40th Army, which he held until August 1946.
4.
Alexei Yepishev then left the Armed Forces and was appointed the Ukrainian Communist Party's secretary for personnel matters.
5.
Alexei Yepishev was a deputy in the 3rd and 4th convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, between 12 March 1950 to 14 March 1958.
6.
On 26 August 1951, Alexei Yepishev was posted as Deputy Minister for personnel matters in the Ministry of State Security.
7.
Alexei Yepishev was one of many officials with no prior experience in intelligence who were transferred to the MGB after it was purged of members associated with its executed former chief, Viktor Abakumov.
8.
On 11 March 1953, shortly after Stalin's death, when Lavrentiy Beria resumed control of the MGB, Alexei Yepishev was returned to his post in Odessa, where he remained until August 1955.
9.
From 14 August 1955 until 27 November 1960, Alexei Yepishev was the Soviet ambassador to the People's Republic of Romania.
10.
Alexei Yepishev was a deputy of the 6th to 11th convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, from 18 March 1962 until his death.
11.
On 11 May 1962, Alexei Yepishev was promoted to the rank of Army General and appointed Chief of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy, effectively the Armed Forces' political supervisor.
12.
When Khrushchev was toppled from power and removed from the Central Committee of the CPSU on 16 November 1964, Alexei Yepishev, who had been a candidate member since 1952, was promoted to fill the vacancy.
13.
In 1968, during the Prague Spring, when the Czechoslovak communist party under Alexander Dubcek was attempting to combine state control of industry with free speech and the abolition of censorship, Alexei Yepishev was the first high-ranking official to hint publicly, in May 1968, that the USSR might use military force to suppress the experiment.
14.
In spring 1979, Alexei Yepishev led a military delegation to Kabul, just before the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan on 24 December 1979, setting off a war that lasted ten years.
15.
In July 1985, Alexei Yepishev was the first high ranking Soviet communist official to be removed from office after the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev took control of the communist party.
16.
Alexei Yepishev went into semi-retirement with the title of inspector in the Ministry of Defense, but died shortly after.