The Bolshevik who led the Profintern and was shot with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
I have said everything and ask for no leniency. I need full rehabilitation or death. But if it ever turns out that I was innocent, restore me posthumously to the party and publish my rehabilitation in the newspapers.
Born into a Jewish melamed family in Ekaterinoslav Governorate, he joined the RSDLP in 1901. After the 1905 revolution, arrest, and exile, he fled to Paris and worked in the French trade-union movement. As General Secretary of the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern) from 1921 to 1937, he organized the left wing of the international labor movement. Appointed Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs in 1939, he led the Sovinformburo during the war and supervised the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Arrested in 1949, he retracted his confession at the 1952 JAC trial and dismantled the prosecution's case point by point, but was sentenced to death and shot. Posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.
Career timeline
1901–1908Joined RSDLP, fought in the 1905 revolution in Kazan, arrested, exiled, fled abroad
1909–1917Paris emigration, active in French Socialist Party and trade-union movement
1918–1921Headed textile workers', railway workers', and Moscow provincial trade-union councils
1921–1937General Secretary of the Profintern (Red International of Labour Unions)
1937–1939Director of State Literary Publishing House (Goslitizdat)
1939–1946Deputy Commissar (Deputy Minister) of Foreign Affairs of the USSR
1941–1948Deputy head (1941–1945) and head (1945–1948) of the Sovinformburo
1949–1952Arrested, tried, and shot in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee case
ECCI secretary who carried out the Stalinist purges (1928–1943)
In 1939 Stalin told Dimitrov: "Manuilsky is a toady! He was a Trotskyite! We criticised him for keeping quiet and not speaking out when the purges of Trotskyite bandits were going on, and now he has started toadying!" Almost every Old Bolshevik with a Trotsky link was killed or jailed except him.
A Bolshevik from Volhynia, born in the village of Sviatets to a priest's family (English sources say peasants) and a law graduate of the Sorbonne, he was a member of the Vpered group, joined the Mezhraiontsy in 1917, and held Ukrainian and Comintern posts. As ECCI secretary in the 1920s and 1930s he directed the Stalinist purges in the Comintern apparatus and foreign communist parties, and in 1945–46 he led the campaign against 'Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism'. In 1945 he headed Ukraine's delegation at San Francisco, chaired the committee that drafted the Preamble and Chapter 1 of the UN Charter, and from 1944 to 1952 was Ukrainian foreign minister.
Career timeline
1903Joins RSDLP while studying at St. Petersburg University; aligns with Bolsheviks
1905–1906Agitator for Petersburg Committee; organizes Kronstadt and Sveaborg mutinies
1906Arrested, sentenced to 5 years exile in Yakutia; escapes, emigrates to Paris
1907–1912Paris exile; intermittent illegal returns to Russia for underground work
1912–1913Underground work in St. Petersburg and Moscow; re-emigrates
1914–1917Anti-war position; edits Golos and Nashe Slovo with Trotsky
1917.05Returns to Russia, joins the Mezhraiontsy
1917.08VI Congress: Mezhraiontsy merge into the Bolshevik Party
1921–1922First Secretary of CP(B)U; People's Commissar for Agriculture during the famine
Architect of Comintern propaganda and party history compiler
"We believe that Byelorussians are not a nation, and the ethnographic specifics that differentiate them from Russians must be erased" — in Zvyazda, the newspaper he edited, 6 October 1918.
A Latvian Bolshevik who built party organizations in Belarus and Latvia and twice served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia in the 1920s. As head of the Comintern Information-Propaganda Department he coordinated the ideological line of foreign communist parties, and as director of the Institute of Red Professorship (Party History) he authored the 1935 Short History of the CPSU, the direct precursor to the 1938 Short Course. Arrested in 1937, executed the following year, and rehabilitated in 1955.
Career timeline
1910Joined RSDLP(b)
1917Secretary of Minsk Soviet, editor of Zvyazda
1920–1922Secretary, Central Bureau of CP(b) of Byelorussia
1926–1927Head of Agitprop, CC VKP(b)
1927–1928First Secretary, CC CP(b) of Byelorussia
1928–1937Head of Information-Propaganda Dept., ECCI
1932–1935Director, Institute of Red Professorship (Party History)
1935–1937Deputy Head, Dept. of Party Propaganda & Agitation, CC VKP(b)
Comintern architect of the Canton uprising who led the first party-apparatus challenge to Stalin's collectivization
At the 16th Party Congress in 1930, he took the podium and openly assailed Stalin's forced collectivization. When he finished, the hall fell silent — his was one of the few speeches not greeted by applause.
A Georgian Bolshevik who left a deep mark on the Chinese revolution as a Comintern operative. In 1927 he chaired the August 7 Emergency Conference, engineered the removal of Chen Duxiu, elevated Mao Zedong to the Politburo, and approved the Canton uprising. He also advanced the theory that China's 'Asiatic mode of production' made it possible to bypass the capitalist stage. In 1930 he and Syrtsov formed the first party-apparatus opposition to Stalin's forced collectivization; demoted and marginalized, he shot himself in 1935 under threat of arrest.
Career timeline
1917Worked in Petrograd military organization; secretary of Kutaisi party committee
1918–1920Led Tbilisi and Baku committees; Presidium member, CP of Azerbaijan
1921–1922Fought in the Kronstadt suppression; party organizer for Vyborg district, Petrograd
1922–1924First Secretary, Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia
1925–1929Secretary of KIM (Young Communist International); Comintern rep to China — led Aug. 7 Emergency Conference and approved Canton uprising
1930First Secretary of Transcaucasian Kraikom; formed Syrtsov-Lominadze bloc — expelled from CC
1933–1935Secretary of Magnitogorsk city party committee
