The worker-Bolshevik who built the Komsomol's mass base and made 'study' its watchword
At the Fifth Komsomol Congress in 1922, when a delegate proposed that Smorodin be promoted nationwide as "the leader of working youth," he shot back from the podium: "What the hell are you making an icon out of me for?"
Born into a peasant family, he became an apprentice at a surgical instruments factory in Petrograd at fourteen, joined the Bolsheviks in May 1917, and took part in the October armed uprising. He led the creation of the Petrograd Socialist Union of Working Youth (SSRM) and served as First Secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee from 1921 to 1924, consolidating the youth organization's mass base during the NEP and making 'study' its central task. He later served as a regional party secretary in Leningrad and Stalingrad and participated in the Great Purge as an NKVD troika member, but was himself arrested as an 'enemy of the people' in 1938, shot in 1939, and posthumously rehabilitated in 1954.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1911–1917Apprentice and worker, Petrograd surgical instruments factory
- 1917Co-founder, Petrograd Socialist Union of Working Youth (SSRM)
- 1920–1921Secretary, Petrograd Komsomol City Committee
- 1921–1924First Secretary, Komsomol (RKSM) Central Committee
- 1928–1937Secretary, Vasileostrovsky, Vyborg, and Moscow district committees, Leningrad
- 1937Second Secretary, Leningrad Regional Party Committee
- 1937–1938First Secretary, Stalingrad Regional Party Committee
- 1938First Secretary, Stalingrad City Party Committee
Related historical events
Komsomol leadership and party work in Leningrad and Stalingrad
From 1920 Smorodin was a member of the Komsomol Central Committee and secretary of its Petrograd city committee. From 1921 to 1924 he served as first secretary, then officially called general secretary, of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Youth League. During these years the Komsomol conducted political-educational work among young people amid the New Economic Policy. The league's stated program combined the dissemination of communist ideas and political education with participation in economic and state construction and the defense of Soviet power. In July 1924 it was renamed the Russian Leninist Communist Youth League.
After completing Marxist courses at the Communist Academy in 1928, Smorodin held district-level posts in the Leningrad party organization. He headed the organizational department of the Vasileostrovsky district committee from September 1928 to December 1929, then served as its first secretary until December 1931. He was first secretary of the Vyborg district committee from December 1931 to June 1936 and of the Moscow district committee from June 1936 to August 1937. In 1937 he became second secretary of the Leningrad regional committee; from September he served as acting first secretary and then first secretary of the Stalingrad regional committee. Elected to the USSR Supreme Soviet in December 1937, he was appointed first secretary of the Stalingrad city committee in June 1938. As a member of an NKVD special troika established under Order No. 00447 of 30 July 1937, he actively participated in repression in Leningrad and Stalingrad regions. The party Central Committee removed him as regional first secretary in June 1938, and he was expelled from the party that August.