Vladimir Stepanov was born in 1927 in Kovgora,
Kondopozhsky District, to a
Karelian family. He spoke
Finnish with a strong
Karelian accent. He graduated from the
Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1950. In 1952 he was elected secretary of the regional Central Committee of
Komsomol in Karelia. Former Finnish foreign minister
Keijo Korhonen named Stepanov the "worst enemy of Finland's
neutrality". After returning to the USSR, Stepanov was appointed first vice-premier of the
Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. He was one of the initiators of the Soviet-Finnish
Kostomuksha mine project in the north of Karelia. From 1984 Stepanov served as the first secretary of the
Karelian Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1984 he was elected to the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, and from 1986 to 1990 he was a member of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Stepanov died on 14 June 2022 at the age of 95. He was buried in the
Troyekurovskoye Cemetery on 17 June 2022. ==References==