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.
Also known as: Kārlis Baumanis
Activities and affiliations
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
The Soviet Politburo
- Candidate 1929.04–1930.07
1930.07 not re-elected · Executed in 1937
Related historical events
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationMoscow party first secretary who pushed collectivizationAs a candidate member of the Politburo, he forced full collectivization; he was executed in 1937.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeParty official arrested and killed during interrogationHe was arrested in 1937 and died during interrogation.
First Secretary of the Central Asian Bureau, 1931–1934
In April 1931 Bauman was transferred from the Moscow party organisation to the Central Asian Bureau (Sredazbyuro), which he headed as first secretary until October 1934. Set up in May 1922 and dissolved on 2 October 1934, the bureau was the Central Committee's supreme body in Central Asia: it supervised party and state building in the Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik and Kirghiz (Kazakh) republics after the 1924 delimitation. Its remit covered land and water nationalisation, collectivisation, the campaign against religion and the cultural revolution, and Bauman also kept a seat in the Central Committee Secretariat until 1932 (sources differ, some closing his secretaryship in 1932 and others in 1934). The post gave him the chance to apply the all-out collectivisation line of his Moscow period on a large scale and from the centre of party and state power.
The bureau's own secretaries answered to Moscow: Bauman had been its master, Central Committee officials now assessed his record as its former head, and he was summoned back to Moscow in 1934 to run Central Committee departments. Secondary work is consistent that Bauman, an especially zealous advocate of collectivisation by any means, brought the methods of the 1929-1930 campaign to Central Asia: collectivisation and the campaign against religion bore down on the Kazakh and other nomadic and pastoral populations, with famine and mass loss of livestock following. The sources displayed here do not record decisions he personally took in the region, so the Central Asian phase is best read as part of the 1930-1933 famine in the USSR and of the class war in the countryside rather than as an individual initiative.