Wartime steward of besieged Leningrad, first victim of the Leningrad Affair
On 13 August 1949, Popkov was summoned to Georgy Malenkov's office and arrested on the spot. It was the opening of the Leningrad Affair.
A Soviet party official from Vladimir Governorate, Popkov rose from carpenter's apprentice to First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional and City Party Committee. As chairman of the Leningrad City Soviet from 1939, he was the hands-on organiser of the city's survival during the 872-day siege: food supply, epidemic control, energy, and the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga. After the war he led reconstruction and the end of rationing, becoming First Secretary in 1946 and running the party apparatus in the USSR's second city. The Trade Fair he organised in January 1949 drew the hostility of Georgy Malenkov, triggering the fabricated Leningrad Affair; Popkov was arrested in Malenkov's office that August and executed in October 1950. He was judicially rehabilitated in 1954 and restored to the Party in 1987.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1925–1926Secretary of Vladimir Volost Komsomol Committee
- 1926–1937Carpenter and researcher; graduated Leningrad Institute of Municipal Construction Engineers
- 1937–1938Chairman of Leninsky District Soviet Executive Committee, Leningrad
- 1938–1939First Deputy Chairman of Leningrad City Soviet
- 1939–1946Chairman of Leningrad City Soviet Executive Committee — managed city defence and supply throughout the siege
- 1941–1944Member of Defence Commission, Air Defence Army Military Council, and Extraordinary Anti-Epidemic Commission
- 1946–1949First Secretary of Leningrad Regional and City Party Committee; member of Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
- 1949–1950Leningrad Affair: arrested, tried, and executed (judicially rehabilitated 1954, party rehabilitation 1987)
Related historical events
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarLeningrad defense leader
- 1941–1944Siege of LeningradLeningrad siege supply and defence organiserAs chairman of Leningrad City Soviet, he managed food supply and city defence throughout the 872-day siege.
- 1949–1950The Leningrad Affairfirst victimThe Leningrad trade fair he hosted in January 1949 drew Malenkov’s attack and began the affair; he was arrested that August and executed in 1950.
The Leningrad Affair: From Removal in 1949 to Rehabilitation in 1954
The Leningrad Affair began with the All-Russian Wholesale Trade Fair held in Leningrad on 10-20 January 1949. The fair was convened under a decision of the USSR Ministry of Trade and the RSFSR Council of Ministers, which obliged the Leningrad City Executive Committee to assist in organising it. Yet on 28 January 1949 the Central Committee plenum released Alexey Kuznetsov from his post as a Central Committee secretary, and on 15 February a Politburo resolution "On the anti-Party actions of Comrade Kuznetsov, member of the Central Committee, and Comrades Rodionov and Popkov, candidate members" removed Popkov from the post of First Secretary and imposed a severe reprimand. On 22 February 1949 Malenkov reported that decision to a joint plenum of the Leningrad regional and city committees, where Popkov acknowledged that his own activity had borne an anti-Party character. On 13 August 1949 he was arrested in Malenkov's office and became one of the principal defendants of the Leningrad Affair.
The trial was held behind closed doors on 29-30 September 1950 at the Officers' House on Liteyny Prospect in Leningrad. The USSR had abolished capital punishment in 1947 but reintroduced it on 12 January 1950 for "traitors to the Motherland, spies and wreckers", and it was applied to Popkov and the others retroactively; Russian Wikipedia notes that the death penalty was restored for the sake of the "Leningraders". At 2 a.m. on 1 October 1950, an hour after the verdict was announced, Nikolai Voznesensky, Kuznetsov, Mikhail Rodionov, Popkov, Yakov Kapustin and Pyotr Lazutin were shot, and their ashes were secretly buried at the Levashovo waste ground near Leningrad. They were not the only victims of the case, and estimates of the death toll vary by source; Russian Wikipedia records that a separate trial in Moscow in late October 1950 sentenced twenty people to death.
In December 1953 the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that there had been "no serious grounds" for the criminal prosecution or the Siberian exile of the defendants' families, and on 30 April 1954 the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court overturned the verdict as falsified and rehabilitated Popkov posthumously. On 3 May 1954 the Presidium of the Party Central Committee ruled that Abakumov and his accomplices had extracted "fabricated testimony by beatings and threats", and Popkov's party rehabilitation followed on 18 September 1987.
The causes of the affair remain disputed. Russian Wikipedia describes it as the least studied episode of the late Stalin period, noting that most party files on the main defendants remain classified and that large quantities of documents were destroyed, so researchers still lack access. Historians adduce the Kremlin power struggle of Stalin's final years, proposals to establish a separate Russian Communist Party, and financial discipline violations by the Leningrad leadership.