NEW SOVIET FOREIGN MINISTER

Name: Dmitry Trofimovich Shepilov (pronounced Sheh-peel-off).

Born: In the Krasnodar region northeast of Black Sea, Nov. 4, 1905.

Youth & Education: Unknown.

Party Beginnings: Published "Alcoholism and Crime" (1930), a tract on the evils of vodka; "Social and Individual Elements in the Kolkhoses" (1939), an idealization of collective farm life.

World War II: Political instructor in Ukraine, where he worked closely with Khrushchev. Was promoted to major general within three years.

After War: Joined Central Committee's Department of Propaganda and Agitation, lectured on agriculture, published "The Great Soviet People" (1947), an attack on the Marshall Plan ("which deprives many a European country of sovereignty and transforms them into appendages of the monolithic capitalism of America"), claimed Russian scientists had been ahead of Lavoisier, Marconi and Edison in scientific discoveries.

Appointed deputy director of Propaganda and Agitation in 1948, director in 1949. He suffered a brief setback for association with Politburocrat Nikolai Voznesensky (executed by Stalin, posthumously rehabilitated last month).

Ascendency: Made editor in chief of Pravda (1952), which does not make him a newspaperman ("our most important job: to propagandize"). Same year elected Deputy to the Supreme Soviet and chairman Foreign Affairs

Committee, Council of Nationalities (upper house). Although he published a eulogy on Stalin's economic theories a few months before Stalin's death, he apparently had no trouble making the transition to the new gang. He attacked the consumer-goods program and "vulgarizers of Marxism" in Pravda (Jan. 24, 1955) two weeks before demotion of Malenkov as Premier.

Five months later elected to six-man Secretariat of Central Committee (whose first secretary is Khrushchev). He gave keynote speeches, began to appear with the Big Boys at embassy parties and to find his portrait raised at public functions.

In May 1955 he visited Yugoslavia with B. & K., who took him along instead of Molotov. A month later he visited Egypt, where in private talk with Nasser he presumably laid the foundation for the Czech arms deal.

Appearance: Over 6 ft., a lanky, handsome man with square, impassive face, copious greying hair, muscular neck and a brusque manner, obviously accustomed to authority. Tallest of the top Soviet leaders, most of whom date from the days when Stalin liked no one to be taller than his own 5 ft. 5 in.

Attitude: A perfect Stalin-Khrushchev party servant, a dedicated Communist and agile follower of the weaving party line, who has said: "From our point of view, it is as inevitable as the night follows day that the capitalist system will be replaced by the socialist system."

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