Valentin Falin

Valentin Mikhailovich Falin (Russian: Валентин Михайлович Фалин; 3 April 1926 – 22 February 2018) was a Soviet diplomat and politician.

Falin was born in Leningrad. He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1950.

From 1951 to 1958, he worked at the USSR Foreign Ministry. From 1971 to 1978, he was the Ambassador of the USSR to the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1978, he was appointed First Deputy Chief of the International Information Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a post he left in January 1983 for personal reasons. From 1982 to 1986 he was a political observer, then editor and chief editor in the newspaper Izvestia.

On 10 March 1986 Falin was elected by the Council of Sponsors of the Novosti Press Agency to the position of chairman of the APN board. In 1988–1991 he was the Chief of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. While Falin headed the International Department, its special section for Party Technology, which was located in Room 516, was headed by an alleged specialist in black operations the komitetchik (Russian: комитетчик) Vladimir Osintsev (Russian: Владимир Осинцев) who allegedly supported active measures for Communist Party influence campaigns in countries in which the Communist Party was banned including Chile, El Salvador, South Africa and Turkey. In August 1991, Falin allegedly ordered the desturuction of the files in the International Department. Following the failed 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, he left government service.

From 1992 to 2000, he worked at Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy of Hamburg University (Institut für Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik an der Universität Hamburg) in Germany. He returned to Russia in 2000 and lived in Moscow.