Viktor Afanasyev (politician)

Viktor Grigoryevich Afanasyev (Russian: Ви́ктор Григо́рьевич Афана́сьев; 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.