Viktor Grigoryevich Afanasyev (; 18 November 1922 – 10 April 1994) was a Soviet and Russian public figure, journalist and professor of philosophy who is remembered for his work as a philosophy academic, politician, and newspaper 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 as a 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.

Biography

Early life

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 joined the All-Union Communist Party (b) in 1943.

Academic and public figure

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.

Afanasyev was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1972 and advanced to become a full member in 1981. He was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1976.

A TIME story of October 1989 also recalled that Afanasyev "suffered a nasty embarrassment last month, when Pravda reprinted a lurid dispatch from an Italian newspaper claiming that reformist Supreme Soviet Deputy Boris Yeltsin boozed and shopped his way through a tour of the U.S."

Recognition

Afanasyev was well-recognized for his service by the Soviet state: among the honors awarded him were two Orders of the October Revolution.

He was also bestowed the following awards:

  • Order of Lenin
  • Order of the Patriotic War
  • Order of the Red Banner of Labour
  • Order of the Red Star
  • Medal "For Courage"
  • Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"
  • Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
  • Jubilee Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
  • Jubilee Medal "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
  • Jubilee Medal "Forty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
  • Medal "For the Victory over Japan"
  • Medal "Veteran of Labour"
  • Jubilee Medal "30 Years of the Soviet Army and Navy"
  • Jubilee Medal "50 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"
  • Jubilee Medal "60 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"
  • Jubilee Medal "70 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR"

A thirty-six page work devoted to the achievements of Afanasyev's life was published by the Institute of Socio-Political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2002, in honor of what would have been Afanasyev's 80th birthday.