A party organiser who drove collectivisation forward
In 1930, after being told that 82.4 percent of peasant households had entered collective farms, he replied that it was “too little.”
A Latvian peasant’s son who became a Bolshevik, Bauman rose through revolutionary and party-organisational work into the central leadership. He was a key operator in forcing comprehensive collectivisation in the countryside and drove its rapid implementation while leading the Moscow party organisation. Made a scapegoat for the 1930 excesses, he later continued enforcing party policy in Central Asia and in scientific administration. Arrested in 1937, he died during interrogation and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.
Career Timeline
- 1907Joined the Latvian Social Democratic Workers’ Party and began clandestine political work
- 1917Participated in the October Revolution and the establishment of Soviet power in Kyiv
- 1920–1923Chair of the Kursk provincial trade-union council and executive secretary of the Kursk party committee
- 1928–1930Head of rural work at the Central Committee and First Secretary of the Moscow party committee
- 1929–1930Central Committee Secretary and candidate member of the Politburo
- 1931–1934First Secretary of the Central Asia Bureau
- 1934–1937Head of Central Committee departments for science and technology, and for planning, finance and trade
- 1937Arrested and died in Lefortovo prison; rehabilitated in 1955