The organization man who sat in the Politburo for 20 years, the CC secretary most often dispatched to purge the regions
On the night of 3 April 1917, sitting three or four steps from Lenin at the Finland Station welcome gathering, he wrote: "How many times we underground Bolsheviks had dreamed of seeing and hearing Lenin — and now at last our dream had come true."
An organizer who formed the backbone of the party apparatus throughout the Stalin period. He began as a kitchen boy in a Moscow tavern at age 13, discovered Marxism at workers' night school, and joined the Bolsheviks in 1914. For 20 years a full member of the Politburo (1932–1952), he ran the Orgburo in practice and, as CC secretary, was the figure most frequently dispatched to purge regional party organizations during the Great Terror. He also served as People's Commissar of Railways and of Agriculture, handled wartime military transport and aid for wounded soldiers, and, after being dropped from the Politburo in 1952 (officially due to deafness), remained in the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet until 1962.
Career Timeline
- 1914Joined Bolsheviks; active in Petrograd Committee
- 1917Participated in the October Revolution; delegate to the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets
- 1920–22Secretary of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions; backed Trotsky and Bukharin in the trade-union debate
- 1922–27Chairman of the Railway Workers' Union Central Committee
- 1924–25CC Secretary (first term)
- 1928–30First Secretary, North Caucasus Kraikom; drove collectivization
- 1930–31Chairman, Central Control Commission and Commissar of Workers' and Peasants' Inspection; chaired the special collectivization commission
- 1931–35People's Commissar of Railways; modernised the rail network
- 1932–52Full member of the Politburo (candidate from 1926); 20 years in the top leadership
- 1935–46CC Secretary (second term); de facto head of the Orgburo — most frequently dispatched secretary during the Great Terror to purge and replace regional party leaderships
- 1938–46Chairman of the Soviet of the Union
- 1939–52Chairman of the Party Control Commission; succeeded Yezhov in overseeing party discipline
- 1943–46People's Commissar of Agriculture; involved in post-war recovery planning
- 1946–53Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers; supervised agriculture and kolkhoz affairs
- 1953–62Member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
- 1957–62Chairman of the Soviet-Chinese Friendship Society
Related historical events
- 1917.10–1918.01The October Revolutionparticipated in the October Revolution and delegate to the 2nd Congress of Soviets
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet Transformationenforcer of collectivization
- 1937–1938The Great PurgePlenipotentiary envoy for regional purgesAs CC Secretary and de facto head of the Orgburo, he was the figure most frequently dispatched to purge and replace regional party leaderships during the Great Terror. In late 1938, after Yezhov's dismissal, he chaired a Politburo commission investigating NKVD activities.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarPolitburo member and GKO member responsible for agriculture and transport
Dispatcher of the Great Terror — 'Murderous Roadshows'
During the Great Terror (1937–1938), it was standard practice to dispatch a high-ranking party official from Moscow to the provinces to 'verify' regional party organizations and replace their leadership. Andreyev, as the CC secretary who effectively ran the Orgburo, was the figure most frequently assigned this task, becoming, in J. Arch Getty and Oleg Naumov's phrase, "the unchallengeable master of these murderous roadshows."
Between June and September 1937 alone, he travelled to Voronezh, Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Kursk, Saratov, Kuybyshev, Tashkent, Stalinabad, Rostov, and Krasnodar in succession. In Saratov, where he arrived on 20 July 1937, his main target was the local NKVD chief Yakov Agranov, arrested and shot, along with the second secretary of the regional party and others. At the same time, Andreyev identified 20 employees of the Machine Tractor Stations who were "working very obstructively"; Stalin replied by telegram the same day ordering them all shot. In total, 430 people were executed in the wake of his Saratov visit.
In Kuybyshev, he ordered the regional party boss Pavel Postyshev to intensify the hunt for hidden enemies, after which Postyshev disbanded most local party branches and had 3,300 party members arrested. By year's end, Postyshev was deemed to have gone too far, and Andreyev was paradoxically assigned to collect names of those wrongfully expelled, after which Postyshev himself was arrested and shot. In Tashkent, four days after the founder of the Uzbek Communist Party, Faizullah Khojaev, and seven others were denounced as enemies of the people, First Secretary Akmal Ikramov was expelled from the party; the ensuing purge saw 430 executed. In Stalinabad, Tajikistan, Andreyev had 344 shot.
Nikita Khrushchev later recalled: "Andrei Andreyevich did very much evil during the 1937 repressions. Perhaps because of his own past, he feared being suspected of leniency toward former Trotskyists. Wherever he went, many people died." On every visit, Andreyev maintained constant telegram communication with Stalin, who invariably approved all his recommended lists of party members to be expelled or arrested.
In late 1938, after Nikolai Yezhov was removed as head of the NKVD, Andreyev chaired the Politburo commission investigating NKVD activities, an irony in which the man who had worked hand-in-glove with the terror apparatus was now tasked with 'cleaning up' its excesses.