Vilgelm Georgiyevich Knorin
Вильгельм Георгиевич Кнорин
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)