Comintern envoy who attended the CCP founding congress as “Nikolsky”, shot in the Great Purge
Born to a Jewish family in Transbaikal, he worked as a shop clerk in Chita; mobilised into Kolchak’s army in 1919, he defected to the Red Army. He joined the Russian Communist Party in 1921, began working for the Comintern and served in the intelligence department of the Far Eastern Republic’s People’s Revolutionary Army. Sent by the Comintern’s Far Eastern Bureau in Irkutsk, he arrived in Shanghai in June 1921 as “Nikolsky”, urged Li Da with Maring to convene a national congress and on 23 July spoke at the First Congress on the aims of the Profintern. He later ran clandestine work for Soviet intelligence and state security in Manchuria and China. Accused in the Great Purge of spying for Japan, he was shot in 1938 after a ten-minute trial and rehabilitated in 1956. For decades he was the “forgotten fifteenth person” of the founding congress.
Also known as: Nikolsky · Vladimir Neumann · Victor Berg
Activities and affiliations
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1921
CominternComintern Far Eastern Bureau envoy to ChinaMain
Diplomacy and international organization -
1921–1938
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
Diplomacy and international organization -
1922–1937
Soviet Union state institutionsPlenipotentiary of the NKVD state security directorate
Security, intelligence and policing
Career Timeline
- 1916–1917Private in a Siberian reserve regiment of the imperial army
- 1919Defected from Kolchak’s army to the Red Army
- 1921Joined the Russian Communist Party and the Comintern’s work
- 1921Attended the First CCP Congress as “Nikolsky”
- 1922–1925Reconnaissance section of the Far Eastern frontier representative office
- 1935–1937Underground work in China as a state-security plenipotentiary
- 1938Shot at Khabarovsk
- 1956Posthumously rehabilitated