The boy commissar who built the Komsomol into the party's youth-training apparatus
After stepping down as Komsomol chief, he signed on a freighter under a false name and toured Germany, Britain, Belgium, Portugal, and Turkey — his fellow deckhands never guessed they were scrubbing decks with a candidate member of the Central Committee.
Son of a village priest, he founded a youth communist cell at his Smolensk school at sixteen. In 1922 he became the first chairman of the All-Union Pioneer Organization, and from 1924 to 1928, as Komsomol General Secretary, he built the schools for peasant youth and factory apprenticeship schools that turned the Komsomol into the party's cadre-training apparatus. His emphasis on broad education was backed by Krupskaya and Lunacharsky. After his leadership he toured Europe disguised as a merchant sailor, then worked in Transcaucasian party organs and railway political departments, earning the Order of Lenin in 1936. Arrested during the Great Purge, he was shot in 1938 and posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.
Career Timeline
- 1918Founded youth communist organization at Smolensk school
- 1919Chairman, Smolensk District-City Komsomol Committee
- 1920–1921Secretary, Tyumen and Smolensk Provincial Komsomol Committees
- 1921–1922Head of Political Education, Komsomol Central Committee
- 1922First Chairman, Central Bureau of the All-Union Pioneer Organization
- 1922–1924Secretary, Transcaucasian Regional Komsomol Committee
- 1924–1928First Secretary / General Secretary, Komsomol Central Committee
- 1924–1934Candidate Member, CPSU Central Committee
- 1924–1930Candidate Member, CPSU Orgburo
- 1930–1931Second Secretary, Transcaucasian Regional Party Committee
- 1931–1933Member of Presidium, Tsentrosoyuz; Chairman, Vsekopit
- 1933–1937Head of Political Department, Murmansk / Kirov Railway
- 1937Head, South-Eastern Railway Administration