Lev Voronin

Lev Alekseyevich Voronin (Russian: Лев Алексеевич Воронин; 22 February 1928 – 24 June 2006) was a Soviet Russian official. He served as a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, literally the Vice-Premier of the Soviet Union, from 1989 to 1990. Responsible for the "general issues" of the cultural and economic administration of the Soviet Union during the late Gorbachev Era, Voronin became acting Chairman of the Council of Ministers in between Nikolai Ryzhkov's hospitalisation and Valentin Pavlov's election as Prime Minister. Voronin worked as a banker following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Early life and career

Voronin was born on 22 February 1928 in the city of Perm, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union. He graduated as a mechanical engineer from the Ural Polytechnic Institute in 1949. In 1953 Voronin became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

Voronin, along with the six other Deputy Premiers, had a career background in the Soviet military-industrial complex. He started working at an industrial plant in Sverdlovsk in 1949 as a common worker and eventually became the plant's manager. From 1959 to 1963 Voronin was a chief engineer in a plant located in the Kamensk-Ural Sverdlovsk region, and from 1963 he started to work as a chief engineer for a plant in the Urals for the Sverdlovsk Supreme Soviet of the National Economy. Later that year Voronin was appointed to the post of head of the radio and electronics industries.