The Right Opposition's institutional anchor in Moscow
19 October 1928. Stalin himself mounts the podium at the joint plenum of the Moscow party organization. The organization Uglanov built over four years overwhelmingly endorses the CC's condemnation of the 'right danger.' He is removed as first secretary one month later.
A peasant-born Bolshevik who rose to lead the Moscow party organization from 1924 to 1928, becoming one of the most powerful figures in the party. As CC secretary and candidate Politburo member, he controlled the party apparatus and, together with Ryutin, led the defeat of the Left Opposition in Moscow. After 1928, however, he emerged as a key leader of the Right Opposition alongside Bukharin and Rykov, opposing forced collectivization and breakneck industrialization, and in 1929 publicly criticized the party leadership for refusing to acknowledge economic policy errors. He recanted later that year but was expelled in the Ryutin affair of 1932, briefly reinstated, then rearrested in 1936 and shot the following year.
Career Timeline
- 1907Joins the RSDLP as a Bolshevik
- 1914–16Serves in the Tsarist army; wounded, returns to Petrograd
- 1917Participates in the February and October Revolutions; Petrograd Soviet deputy
- 1921–22Responsible secretary of the Petrograd party committee; helps suppress Kronstadt
- 1922–24Responsible secretary of the Nizhny Novgorod party committee
- 1924–28First secretary of the Moscow party committee; CC secretary
- 1926–29Candidate member of the Politburo
- 1928–30People's Commissar of Labour of the USSR
- 1932Expelled from the party in the Ryutin affair
- 1937Sentenced to death by the Military Collegium; shot the same day
Related historical events
- 1917.02–07The February RevolutionParticipant in the February Revolution, Petrograd Soviet deputy
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionOctober Revolution participant
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)as the organizational base of the Right Opposition, supported the continuation of NEP
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationOrganizational backbone of the Right OppositionAs Moscow party first secretary he gave the Right Opposition its institutional weight; during the 1928 grain crisis he opposed emergency measures and, alongside Bukharin and Rykov, resisted the crash industrialization and forced collectivization course.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeTargetA Moscow party leader aligned with Bukharin, executed in 1937.
Master of the Moscow Party Machine
Uglanov entered the central political stage in autumn 1924 when he was appointed first secretary of the Moscow party organization. Over four years he built Moscow into the party's largest regional power base, staffing the district committees with loyalists. Together with Martemyan Ryutin of the Krasnaya Presnya district, the Moscow machine served as the battering ram that crushed the Left Opposition (Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev) in 1925–27, a service for which Uglanov was rewarded with candidate Politburo membership in 1926.
But when Stalin pivoted in 1928 toward forced grain requisitions and breakneck industrialization, Uglanov turned the very machine he had built against him. At the July 1928 Central Committee plenum, he delivered the most outspoken Rightist speech, demanding that the leadership clarify its intentions 'so that the peasants shall have no grounds for fearing that we are returning to War Communism.' The Moscow district secretaries joined in collective resistance.
Stalin responded by systematically dismantling Uglanov's base. On 19 October 1928, he personally mounted the podium at the joint plenum of the Moscow Committee and Moscow Control Commission to deliver the keynote speech on 'The Right Danger.' The organization Uglanov had laboriously constructed over four years overwhelmingly endorsed the Central Committee's condemnation of the 'Right deviation' that day. Within a month, Uglanov was removed as Moscow first secretary, and his district secretaries (Ryutin, Penkov, Yakovlev, Kulakov) were purged in succession. He had been abandoned by the very apparatus he had built.
Uglanov's fall became a textbook case of how Stalin neutralized and captured regional party machines. The Moscow organization was subsequently reconstituted under Stalin loyalists Molotov and Kaganovich, and the very notion of regional party autonomy began to vanish.