Nomination of Sol Polansky To Be United States Ambassador to Bulgaria

The President today announced his intention to nominate Sol Polansky, of Maryland, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, as Ambassador to the People's Republic of Bulgaria. He succeeds Melvyn Levitsky.

Mr. Polansky was employed by the Department of State in 1952 as a translator at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, later serving as an assistant agricultural Attaché until 1955. He returned to Washington as a research analyst and joined the Foreign Service in 1957. Mr. Polansky studied Polish at the Foreign Service Institute from 1958 to 1959 and was then assigned as deputy principal officer at the U.S. consulate in Poznan, Poland, where he served until 1962. He then served as multilateral affairs officer on the Soviet desk in the State Department until 1966, when he was assigned as chief of external affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. From 1971 to 1972, he was deputy chief of the Office of Cultural Presentations and then attended the National War College , 1972-1973. From 1973 to 1976, Mr. Polansky was deputy director for exchanges on the Soviet desk and departed for East Berlin in 1976, where he served as deputy chief of mission until 1979. From there he served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria, until 1981, when he became Charge d'Affaires ad interim. From 1983 to 1985, he was Vice Chairman of the strategic arms reduction talks delegation. In 1985 he served as Deputy Chairman to the U.S. delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) Budapest Cultural Forum and Deputy Chairman of the U.S. delegation to the CSCE Bern human contacts experts meeting. Since September 1986 Mr. Polansky has been in Bulgarian language training.

He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley (B.A., 1950) and attended Columbia University, 1950-1952. Mr. Polansky is married, has one child, and resides in Bethesda, MD. He was born November 7, 1926, in Newark, NJ.