Bolshevik Orgotdel chief and trade-union officer purged in 1937
Appointed head of the CC Organizational Department in January 1933, he supervised party-wide cadre placement, only to find his own name on the investigation lists of the apparatus he had helped build four years later.
Born 17 June (5 June O.S.) 1893 in Tobolsk into a Jewish family of the meshchane estate, under the birth name Ruven Gershevich Polonsky. He worked as a sailor and unskilled labourer and then as an electrician in St Petersburg, sitting on the Central Board of the Metalworkers' Union in 1913. From March 1917 he was secretary of the Central Board of the Moscow Metalworkers' Union and took part in the October fighting in Moscow; in the civil war he served as a divisional commissar on the Western and Southern fronts and as military commissar of the South-Eastern Railway. He led the Union of Miners in 1920–1924, the Azerbaijan Communist Party in 1930–1933 and the VTsSPS in 1935–1937, and was executed on 30 October 1937.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1907Joined Bolshevik faction of RSDLP
- 1913Central Board, St. Petersburg Metalworkers Union
- 1917Secretary, Moscow Metalworkers Union · October uprising
- 1918–1920Division commissar, SE Railway commissar, chairman VTsSPS Southern Bureau
- 1925–1928Secretary Rogozhsko-Simonovsky district, 2nd Secretary Moscow Committee
- 1930–19331st Secretary Azerbaijan CP CC · Secretary Transcaucasian Regional Committee
- 1933Head, Organizational Department of CC VKP(b)
- 1933–1935Head of Political Administration, Deputy Commissar of Railways
- 1935–1937Secretary, All-Union Central Trade Union Council (VTsSPS)
- 1937Deputy Commissar of Communications · arrested
Related historical events
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionOctober uprising participant
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign Interventionmilitary commissar
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationFirst Secretary of Azerbaijan CP
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeParty and union official targetedA former Central Committee organization chief and trade-union secretary, he was executed in 1937 for an alleged Rightist organization.
Civil-war military and military-administrative career, 1917–1920
From October 1917 Polonsky served on the Moscow Military-Revolutionary Committee, as commissar of the Aleksandrovsk Railway's military-revolutionary committee, and as a member of the collegium of the Moscow provincial Supreme Council of the National Economy. In July 1918 he was military commissar of the Vitebsk detachment, and from 21 August to 21 September 1918 military commissar of the 1st Smolensk Infantry Division on the Western Front. In October 1918 he became military commissar of the Military Communications Directorate of the Southern Front, and in May 1919 served as senior instructor of the Southern Bureau of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS). In September 1919 he was military commissar of the South-Eastern Railway, and from November 1919 to March 1920 chaired the Organizing Bureau of the All-Russian Union of Miners. These postings trace a career moving between front, railway and trade-union work, handling civil-war supply and mobilization tasks.