Matvei Muranov
Matvei Muranov Матвей Муранов | |
|---|---|
8th Orgburo | |
| In office 8 March 1919 – 5 April 1920 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Matvei Konstantinovich Muranov 29 November 1873 |
| Awards | Order of Lenin (×2) |
Matvei Konstantinovich Muranov (
Revolutionary beginnings
Born in a peasant family in
After the outbreak of
Facing the death penalty, some Bolshevik deputies and Lev Kamenev, who had been sent to Russia to direct their work in January 1914, wavered and moderated their position. Muranov, however, took an uncompromising approach,[2] which enhanced his reputation within the Bolshevik party. In the end, the Tsarist government dropped most of the charges against the accused, who were skillfully defended by the future head of the Russian Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky and other lawyers. Muranov and other Duma deputies were exiled to the remote Turukhansk region of Siberia for life.
The 1917 Revolution
After the overthrow of the
Muranov used his political capital within the Bolshevik party, which he had earned with his behavior at the 1915 trial, to provide political cover for Kamenev, whose behavior at the trial had made him suspect in the eyes of rank and file Bolsheviks. Together, they took over Pravda and ousted its previous editors,
When Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev returned to Russia on 3 April, they opposed the Kamenev-Stalin-Muranov line and called for a socialist revolution and a complete break with the Mensheviks instead. Once Lenin emerged victorious at the next All-Russian Bolshevik conference in late April 1917, Muranov was sent back to Kharkov to run the local Bolshevik newspaper, Proletarian.
At the
Political life
Muranov participated in the Bolshevik seizure of power during the October Revolution of 1917 and was elected to the Bolshevik-dominated Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at the Second Congress of Soviets. On 27 October, he became a member of the joint Bolshevik-Left Socialist-Revolutionary commission charged with preparing the Second Congress of Peasant Soviets in circumvention of the existing Central Executive Committee of Peasant Soviets.[4] Muranov was a Bolshevik candidate in the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election, being fielded in the Arkhangelsk constituency.[5] As a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, he supported Lenin during the intra-party debate over the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in early 1918.
Muranov was not re-elected to the Central Committee at the 7th Bolshevik Party Congress in March 1918, but returned to the body after the 8th Congress in March 1919. He remained a member of the Central Committee until 1923. Between March 1919 and April 1920, he was a candidate member of the Central Committee's Orgburo.[6]
During the intra-party struggles of the 1920s, Muranov was an ally of Joseph Stalin. At the 11th Party Congress in 1922 he was elected to the Central Control Commission, a member of which he remained until 1934. In 1923-1934 he was also a member of the Soviet Supreme Court. In 1934 he moved to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
Muranov survived the Great Purge, which claimed the lives of most Old Bolsheviks, and was sent into retirement in 1939. He died in Moscow aged 86.
Notes
- ^ Robert B. McKean, St. Petersburg Between the Revolutions: workers and revolutionaries, June 1907-February 1917, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990, pp. 140-1.
- ^ "Chapter 2 of Lenin's Socialism and War". Archived from the original on 2012-02-04. Retrieved 2006-03-08.
- ^ USSR: Communist Party: 1917-1919 at www.archontology.org
- ISBN 2-85065-063-3
- ISBN 9785858793557.
- ^ USSR: Communist Party: Orgburo at www.archontology.org