the Soviet Union") in 1968. He remained as deputy editor with Pravda until joining the Kommunist (regarded as the theoretical and political organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) for a brief period as chief editor in 1974-1975. He returned to become chief editor of Pravda in 1975, remaining with the newspaper in the same capacity until 1989. Afanasyev was a Deputy (representative) of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, serving from 1974 to 1979. He was twice elected as a Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, serving from 1979 to 1989. As Pravda editor Afansyev's period as editor of Pravda saw a lukewarm response to Mikhail Gorbachev's changes in the late 1980s, vacillating between support for Gorbachev's policies and for those of his opponents in the leading circles of the party, while Pravda readership witnessed a precipitous decline, dropping by around half in the course of Gorbachev's first four years at the helm of the Soviet Union. 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." The report noted that the newspaper was pressured into publishing an apology, although recorded video subsequently broadcast over the Soviet television "appeared to show Yeltsin at least mildly intoxicated." Afanasyev was dismissed in favor of Gorbachev ally Ivan Frolov under the guise of requesting a "transfer to scientific work" during the subsequent fallout. He spent the remaining half-decade of his life absorbed in work for the Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1991). He died in Moscow in 1994 and was buried at the Kuntsevo Cemetery. 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 a laureate of the USSR State Prize in 1983. 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. Bibliography 1978: Social Information and the Regulation of Social Development, Progress Publishers (Moscow). 1987: Historical Materialism, International