Yudin Pavel Fyodorovich (August 26 [September 7], 1899, selo Apraksino, Sergach Uyezd, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate — April 10, 1968, Moscow) was a Soviet philosopher, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1953), and state and party figure. A native of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, he began his working life in Nizhny Novgorod and rose to the post of Soviet ambassador to China.[1]

Origins and education

He was born into a peasant family. In 1912 he finished the village school in Apraksino and left for Nizhny Novgorod, where he worked as a lathe operator's apprentice, and later as a metal lathe operator at a machine-building plant and a locomotive workshop.[1] In April 1918 he joined the RCP(b) and went to the front as a volunteer; he fought against Kolchak in the Urals, rising from political instructor to regimental commissar of the 57th Rifle Division.[1][2] From 1921 to 1924 he studied at the Leningrad Communist University, after which he was sent to the Novgorod Gubernia Party Committee, where until 1927 he headed the propaganda and agitation department and edited the gubernia newspaper Zvezda.[1] From 1927 to 1931 he was a student in the philosophy department of the Institute of Red Professors.[1]

Scholarly and public activity

Yudin's first monograph, "The Materialist and Religious Worldview," came out in 1930. In 1931 he worked as a researcher at the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute; from 1932 to 1938 he headed the Institute of Red Professors of Philosophy and sat on the editorial boards of the journals Bolshevik and Under the Banner of Marxism.[1] In 1933–1934 he took an active part in founding the Union of Soviet Writers: he served as executive secretary of the organizing committee of the union's first congress and participated in drafting its charter. At the same time, from 1933 to 1937, he edited the journal Literary Critic.[1]

From 1937 he headed OGIZ of the RSFSR; from 1938 to 1944 he was director of the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1943 his work "G. V. Plekhanov" was published in the series "Brilliant People of the Great Russian Nation" and was awarded the State (Stalin) Prize.[2][3] From 1944 to 1947 he continued his editorial work. In 1953 he was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in philosophy.[1] His main scholarly interests were historical materialism and scientific communism.[4]

From 1952 to 1961 he was a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU; from October 1952 to March 1953 he was a candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Committee. He was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 3rd and 4th convocations.[2]

Diplomatic Work

From 1953 to 1959 he served as the USSR's ambassador to the People's Republic of China.[2]

Awards

Yudin was awarded two Orders of Lenin (1949, 1959), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1945), the medals "For the Defense of Moscow" (1944), "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945" (1945), and "In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow" (1947), as well as the USSR State Prize (1943).[1][2]

He is buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. Archival materials are held in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (fond 1636) and the Manuscripts Department of the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (fond 147).[1]

Sources

  1. isaran.ru — Yudin Pavel Fyodorovich. — IS RAS
  2. vivovoco.astronet.ru — VIVOS VOCO: Yudin Pavel Fyodorovich
  3. prlib.ru — G. V. Plekhanov — Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library
  4. gufo.me — YUDIN Pavel Fyodorovich — Great Encyclopedic Dictionary