Office: | Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union |
Premier: | Nikolai Ryzhkov |
Term Start: | February 1980 |
Term End: | 5 September 1984 |
Office1: | Minister of the Chemical Industry |
Term Start1: | October 1965 |
Term End1: | 1980 |
Birth Name: | Leonid Arkadevich Kostandov |
Birth Date: | 27 November 1915 |
Birth Place: | Kerki, Turkmenistan, Russian Empire |
Death Place: | Leipzig, East Germany |
Restingplace: | Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Moscow, Soviet Union |
Party: | Communist Party |
Alma Mater: | Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering |
Nationality: | Russian |
Leonid Kostandov (; 27 November 1915 – 5 September 1984) was a Soviet engineer and politician who served as the minister of the chemical industry between 1965 and 1980 and as the deputy premier from 1980 to his death.
Being a native of Kerki, Turkmenistan, Kostandov was born on 27 November 1915 into an ethnic Armenian family.[1] [2] He started his career in a local cotton gin, and then he worked in a silk-weaving mill in 1930.[1] [2] He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering in 1940.[2] He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1942.[2] Following his graduation he began to work as a manager in a chemical plant in Chirchik.[1] In 1951 he was awarded a Stalin Prize.[1] He was appointed to the central administration of the chemical industry in Moscow in 1953.[1] He was named as the minister of the chemical industry in October 1965[2] and remained in the post in 1980.[1] The same year he was appointed deputy prime minister responsible for chemical and related industries.[1]
Kostandov died of a heart attack on 5 September 1984 while he was visiting a fair in Leipzig, East Germany.[1] [3] He was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis after the official funeral ceremony held in Red Square, Moscow.[3] [4]