Leonid Kostandov

Leonid Kostandov (Russian: Леонид Костандов; 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. He started his career in a local cotton gin, and then he worked in a silk-weaving mill in 1930. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering in 1940. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1942. Following his graduation he began to work as a manager in a chemical plant in Chirchik. In 1951 he was awarded a Stalin Prize. He was appointed to the central administration of the chemical industry in Moscow in 1953. He was named as the minister of the chemical industry in October 1965 and remained in the post in 1980. The same year he was appointed deputy prime minister responsible for chemical and related industries.

Kostandov died of a heart attack on 5 September 1984 while he was visiting a fair in Leipzig, East Germany. He was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis after the official funeral ceremony held in Red Square, Moscow.