Vyacheslav Molotov

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Vyacheslav Molotov
Вячеслав Молотов
Responsible Secretary of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
In office
16 March 1921 – 3 April 1922
Preceded byNikolay Krestinsky
Succeeded byJoseph Stalin
(as General Secretary)
Personal details
Born
Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Skryabin

(1890-03-09)9 March 1890
Kukarka, Russian Empire (present day Sovetsk, Kirov Oblast, Russia)
Died8 November 1986(1986-11-08) (aged 96)
Moscow, Soviet Union
Resting placeNovodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
Political party
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1920; died 1970)​
RelativesVyacheslav Nikonov (grandson)
AwardsOrder of the Badge of Honour
Signature
Central institution membership
  • 1926–1957: Full member,
    Presidium
    of CPSU
  • 1921–1926: Candidate member,
    Politburo
    of CPSU
  • 1921–1930: Full member,
    Secretariat
    of AUCP(b)
  • 1921–1930: Full member,
    16th Orgburo
    of CPSU
Other offices held

Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov

Second World War
, and again from 1953 to 1956.

An Old Bolshevik, Molotov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906 and was arrested and internally exiled twice before the October Revolution of 1917. He briefly headed the party's Secretariat before supporting Stalin's rise to power in the 1920s, becoming one of his closest associates. Molotov was made a full member of the Politburo in 1926 and became premier in 1930, playing a central role in implementing Stalin's policies of forced agricultural collectivization, which resulted in widespread famine. He also oversaw the Great Purge, during which mass arrests and executions were carried out against political dissidents and ordinary citizens. As foreign minister from 1939, Molotov signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, and during the Second World War was deputy chairman of the State Defense Committee and Stalin's main negotiator with the Allies. After the war, he began to lose favour, losing his ministership in 1948 before being criticized by Stalin at the 19th Party Congress in 1952.

Molotov was reappointed foreign minister after Stalin's death in 1953, but his staunch opposition to leader Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy led him to join a failed coup against Khrushchev in 1957, after which he was dismissed from all of his positions. Molotov was sent to Mongolia as an ambassador before being expelled from the party in 1961. He continued to defend Stalin's legacy until his own death in 1986.

Early life and career

Molotov's birth house in Sovetsk, Kirov Oblast.

Molotov was born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin in the village of

Uyezd, Vyatka Governorate (now Sovetsk, Kirov Oblast). Contrary to a commonly-repeated error, he was not related to the composer Alexander Scriabin.[2]

Throughout his teenage years, he was described as "shy" and "quiet" and always assisted his father with his business. He was educated at a secondary school in

Bolshevik faction, which was led by Vladimir Lenin.[4]

Skryabin took the pseudonym "Molotov", derived from the Russian word molot (sledge hammer) since he believed that the name had an "industrial" and "proletarian" ring to it.[4] He was arrested in 1909 and spent two years in exile in Vologda.[5]

In 1911, he enrolled at Saint Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. Molotov joined the editorial staff of a new underground Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, and met Joseph Stalin for the first time in association with the project.[6] That first association between the two future Soviet leaders proved to be brief, however, and failed to lead to an immediate close political association.[6]

Molotov c. 1917

Molotov worked as a so-called "professional revolutionary" for the next several years, wrote for the party press, and attempted to improve the organisation of the underground party.

Petrograd by the Tsarist regime – it being thought that the old name sounded too German.[6]

Molotov became a member of the Bolshevik Party's committee in Petrograd in 1916. When the February Revolution occurred in 1917, he was one of the few Bolsheviks of any standing in the capital. Under his direction, Pravda took to the "left" to oppose the Provisional Government formed after the revolution. When Joseph Stalin returned to the capital, he reversed Molotov's line,[7] but when Lenin arrived, he overruled Stalin. However, Molotov became a protégé of and a close adherent to Stalin, an alliance to which he owed his later prominence.[8] Molotov became a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee, which planned the October Revolution and effectively brought the Bolsheviks to power.[9]

Molotov and the OGPU's first chief Felix Dzerzhinsky, 1924

In 1918, Molotov was sent to Ukraine to take part in the Russian Civil War, which had broken out. Since he was not a military man, he took no part in the fighting. In summer 1919, he was sent on a tour by steamboat of the Volga and Kama rivers, with Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya to spread Bolshevik propaganda. On his return, he was appointed chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod provincial executive, where the local party passed a vote of censure against him, for his alleged fondness for intrigue. He was transferred to Donetsk, and in November 1920, he became secretary to the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Bolshevik Party and married the Soviet politician Polina Zhemchuzhina.[10]

Lenin recalled Molotov to Moscow in 1921, elevated him to full membership of the

Responsible Secretary. Alexander Barmine, a minor communist official, visited Molotov in his office near the Kremlin while he was running the secretariat, and remembered him as having "a large and placid face, the face of an ordinary, uninspired, but rather soft and kindly bureaucrat, attentive and unassuming."[11]

Molotov was criticised by Lenin and

Second Secretary. As a young follower, Molotov admired Stalin but did not refrain from criticising him.[13] Under Stalin's patronage, Molotov became a full member of the Politburo in January 1926.[8]

Molotov speaks at a meeting of peasant women, 1925

During the power struggles after

First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party and held that position until 15 August 1929.[14]

Personality

Trotsky and his supporters underestimated Molotov, and the same went for many others. Trotsky called him "mediocrity personified," and Molotov himself pedantically corrected comrades referring to him as "Stone Arse" by saying that Lenin had actually dubbed him "Iron Arse."[2] However, that outward dullness concealed a sharp mind and great administrative talent. He operated mainly behind the scenes and cultivated an image of a colourless bureaucrat.[15]

Molotov was reported to be a vegetarian and

teetotaler by the American journalist John Gunther in 1938.[16] However, Milovan Djilas claimed that Molotov "drank more than Stalin"[17] and did not note his vegetarianism although they had attended several banquets.[17]

Molotov and his wife had two daughters: Sonia, adopted in 1929, and Svetlana, born in 1930.[10]

Soviet Premier

Molotov and Stalin

Addressing a Moscow communist party conference on 23 February 1929, Molotov emphasised the need to undertake "the most rapid possible growth of industry" both for economic reasons and because, he claimed, the Soviet Union was in permanent, imminent danger of attack.

Alexey Rykov as the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, the equivalent of a Western head of government.[19]

In that post, Molotov oversaw the implementation of the

Second World War.[22]

Klim Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich
, Alexander Kosarev and Vyacheslav Molotov at the seventh Conference of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (Komsomol), July 1932.

Role in collectivisation

Molotov also oversaw

Stalin's regime. He was the main speaker at the Central Committee plenum in 10–17 November 1929, at which the decision was made to introduce collective farming in place of the thousands of small farms owned by peasants, a process that was bound to meet resistance. Molotov insisted that it must begin the following year, and warned officials to "treat the kulak as the most cunning and still undefeated enemy."[23] In the four years that followed, millions of 'kulaks' (land-owning peasants) were forcibly moved onto special settlements to be used as slave labour. In 1931 alone almost two million were deported. In that year, Molotov told the Congress of Soviets "We have never refuted the fact that healthy prisoners capable of normal labour are used for road building and other public works. This is good for society; it is also good for the peasants themselves."[24] The famine caused by the disruption of agricultural output and the emphasis on exporting grain to pay for industrialisation, and the harsh conditions of forced labour killed an estimated 11 million people.[25]

Despite the famine, in September 1931, Molotov sent a secret telegram to communist leaders in the North Caucasus telling them the collection of grain for export was going "disgustingly slowly."

Kharkov, then the capital of Ukraine, and, ignoring warnings from local communist leaders about a grain shortage, told them that their failure to meet their target for grain collection was due to their incompetence. He returned to Kharkov in July 1932, with Lazar Kaganovich, to tell the local communists that there would be no "concessions or vacillations" in the drive to meet targets for exporting grain. This was the first of several actions that led a Kyev Court of Appeal in 2010 to find Molotov, and Kaganovich, guilty of genocide against the Ukrainian people. On 25 July, the same two men followed up the meeting with a secret telegram ordering the Ukrainian leadership to intensify grain collection.[27]

Temporary rift with Stalin

Between the assassination of

Moscow Show Trial in August 1936, the defendants – who had been forced to confess to crimes of which they were innocent – said that they had conspired to kill Stalin and seven other leading Bolsheviks, but not Molotov.[29] According to Alexander Orlov, an NKVD officer who defected to the west, Stalin personally crossed Molotov's name out of the original script.[30]

In May 1936, Molotov went to the Black Sea on an extended holiday under careful NKVD supervision until the end of August, when Stalin apparently changed his mind and ordered Molotov's return.[31]

Two explanations have been put forward for Molotov's temporary eclipse. On 19 March 1936 Molotov gave an interview with the editor of Le Temps concerning improved relations with Nazi Germany.[32] Although Litvinov had made similar statements in 1934 and even visited Berlin that year, Germany had not then reoccupied the Rhineland.[33] Derek Watson believed that it was Molotov's statement on foreign policy that offended Stalin. Molotov had made it clear that improved relations with Germany could develop only if its policy changed and stated that one of the best ways for Germany to improve relations was to rejoin the League of Nations. However, even that was not sufficient since Germany still had to give proof "of its respect for international obligations in keeping with the real interests of peace in Europe and peace generally."[34] Robert Conquest and others believe that Molotov "dragged his feet" over Stalin's plans to purge the party and put Old Bolsheviks like Zinoviev and Kamenev on trial.[35]

Role in the Great Purge

Stalin (center) and Voroshilov
(right) in 1937 during the great purge

After his return to favor, in August, Molotov supported Stalin throughout the purge, during which, in 1938 alone, 20 out of 28

People's Commissars in Molotov's Government were executed.[36] After his deputy, Rudzutak, had been arrested, Molotov visited him in prison, and recalled years later that... "Rudzutak said he had been badly beaten and tortured. Nevertheless he held firm. Indeed, he seemed to have been cruelly tortured" ...but he did not intervene.[37]
During the Great Purge, he approved 372 documented execution lists, more than any other Soviet official, including Stalin. Molotov was one of the few with whom Stalin openly discussed the purges. When Stalin received a note denouncing the deputy chairman of Gosplan, G. I. Lomov, he passed it to Molotov, who wrote on it: "For immediate arrest of that bastard Lomov."[38]

Before the Bolshevik revolution, Molotov had been a "very close friend" of a Socialist Revolutionary, Alexander Arosev, who shared his exile in Vologda. In 1937, fearing arrest, Arosev tried three times to ring Molotov, who refused to speak to him. He was arrested and shot. In the 1950s, Molotov gave Arosev's daughter his signed copies of her father's books, but later wished he had kept them. "It appears that it was not so much the loss of his 'very close friend' but the loss of part of his own book collection ... that Molotov continued to regret."[39]

Late in life, Molotov described his role in purges of the 1930s, arguing that despite the overbreadth of the purges, they were necessary to avoid Soviet defeat in World War II.[40]

Minister of Foreign Affairs

Vyacheslav Molotov (Skryabin), Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Prime Minister) and Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party, in 1932.

In 1939, Adolf Hitler's invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia, in violation of the 1938 Munich Agreement, made Stalin believe that Britain and France, which had signed the agreement, would not be reliable allies against German expansion. That made him decide instead to seek to conciliate Nazi Germany.[41] In May 1939, Maxim Litvinov, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, was dismissed;[42] Molotov was appointed to succeed him.[43] Relations between Molotov and Litvinov had been bad. Maurice Hindus in 1954 stated that Molotov "always detested Litvinov" and resented both his fluency in languages and his ease with foreigners.[44] Litvinov had no respect for Molotov, regarding him as a small-minded intriguer and accomplice in terror.[45]

A list from the Great Purge signed by Molotov, Stalin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, and Zhdanov

Molotov was succeeded in his post as premier by Stalin.

invasion of Poland, which began on 1 September.[47]

The pact's terms gave Hitler authorisation to occupy two thirds of

anti-Soviet officers in what has become known as the Katyn massacre.[46]

In November 1940, Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to meet Ribbentrop and Hitler. In January 1941, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden visited Turkey in an attempt to get the Turks to enter the war on the Allies' side. The purpose of Eden's visit was anti-German, rather than anti-Soviet, but Molotov assumed otherwise. In a series of conversations with Italian Ambassador Augusto Rosso, Molotov claimed that the Soviets would soon be faced with an Anglo–Turkish invasion of the Crimea. The British historian D.C. Watt argued that on the basis of Molotov's statements to Rosso, it would appear that, in early 1941, Stalin and Molotov viewed Britain, rather than Germany, as the principal threat.[50]

Molotov meets with Joachim von Ribbentrop before they sign the Nazi–Soviet Pact.

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact governed Soviet–German relations until June 1941, when Hitler turned east and

State Defence Committee was established soon after Molotov's speech. Stalin was elected chairman and Molotov was elected deputy chairman.[53]

After the German invasion, Molotov conducted urgent negotiations with the British and then the Americans for wartime alliances. He took a secret flight to Scotland, where he was greeted by Eden. The risky flight in a high-altitude

lend-lease plan. Both the British and the Americans only vaguely promised to open a second front against Germany. On his flight back to the Soviet Union, his plane was attacked by German fighters and later mistakenly by Soviet fighters.[54]

There is no evidence that Molotov ever persuaded Stalin to pursue a different policy from that on which he had already decided.[55] Volkogonov could not find one case where any of the elite in government openly disagreed with Stalin.[56]

There is some evidence that, although Stalin realised he needed Molotov, Stalin did not like him.[57] Stalin's one-time bodyguard, Amba, stated: "More general dislike for this statesman robot and for his position in the Kremlin could scarcely be wished and it was apparent that Stalin himself joined in this feeling".[58] A party was silenced by Molotov's arrival, the merriment resuming when he had left.[59]

Stalin could be rude to Molotov.[60] In 1942, Stalin took Molotov to task for his handling of the negotiations with the Allies. He cabled Molotov on 3 June stating how displeased he was and how Molotov had failed to provide details of his actions while talking to Churchill and Roosevelt.[61]

Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference in 1943; Molotov and Anthony Eden stand in the background.

When Beria told Stalin about the

Simon Sebag-Montefiore, acting as music judges for Stalin.[65]

Molotov accompanied Stalin to the

United Nations.[69] In April 1945, shortly after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Molotov engaged in talks with the new American President Harry S. Truman; these talks, despite not being hostile, came to be mythologised decades later as an early crack in US-Soviet relations, presaging the Cold War.[70]

Stalin, Harry S. Truman, Andrei Gromyko, James F. Byrnes and Molotov meeting at the Potsdam Conference on 18 July 1945

From 1945 to 1947, Molotov took part in all four conferences of

bilateral relations between the states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and later evolved into the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA).[71]

In the postwar period, Molotov's power began to decline. A clear sign of his precarious position was his inability to prevent the arrest for "treason" in December 1948 of his Jewish wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, whom Stalin had long distrusted.[72] Molotov initially protested the persecution against her by abstaining from the vote to condemn her, but later recanted, stating: "I acknowledge my heavy sense of remorse for not having prevented Zhemchuzhina, a person very dear to me, from making her mistakes and from forming ties with anti-Soviet Jewish nationalists", and divorced Zhemchuzhina.[73]

Polina Zhemchuzhina befriended Golda Meir, who arrived in Moscow in November 1948 as the first Israeli envoy to the Soviet Union.[74] There are unsubstantiated claims that, being fluent in Yiddish, Zhemchuzhina acted as a translator for a diplomatic meeting between Meir and her husband, the Soviet foreign minister. However, this claim (of being an interpreter) is not supported by Meir's memoir My Life. Presentation of her ambassadorial credentials was done in Hebrew, not in Yiddish. According to Meir's own account of the reception given by Molotov on 7 November, "Mrs. Zhemchuzhina has spent significant time during this reception not only talking to Golda Meir herself but also in conversation with Mrs. Meir's daughter Sarah and her friend Yael Namir about their life as kibbutzniks. They have discussed the complete collectivization of property and related issues. At the end Mrs. Zhemchuzhina gave Golda Meir's daughter Sarah a hug and said: 'Be well. If everything goes well with you, it will go well for all Jews everywhere.' "[75]

Zhemchuzhina was imprisoned for a year in the Lubyanka and was then exiled for three years in an obscure Russian city.[76] She was sentenced to hard labour, spending five years in exile in Kazakhstan.[73] Molotov had no communication with her except for the scant news that he received from Beria, whom he loathed. Zhemchuzhina was freed immediately after the death of Stalin.[76]

Molotov with his wife Polina in 1960

In 1949, Molotov was replaced as Foreign Minister by Andrey Vyshinsky but retained his position as First Deputy Premier and membership in the Politburo.[77] Being appointed Foreign Minister by Stalin to replace the Jewish predecessor Maxim Litvinov to facilitate negotiations with Nazi Germany, Molotov was thus dismissed from the same position at least in part because his wife was also of Jewish origin.[73]

Molotov never stopped loving his wife, and it is said he ordered his maids to make dinner for two every evening to remind him that, in his own words, "she suffered because of me."[77] According to Stalin's daughter, Molotov became very subservient to his wife.[78] Molotov was a yes-man to his wife just as he was to Stalin.[79]

Postwar career

At the

his speech to the 20th Party Congress in 1956, Khrushchev told delegates that Stalin had plans for "finishing off" Molotov and Mikoyan in the aftermath of the 19th Congress.[84]

Molotov with French Foreign Minister Antoine Pinay at the Geneva Summit of 1955

Following Stalin's death, a realignment of the leadership strengthened Molotov's position.

Geneva Conference of 1955.[91]

Molotov's position became increasingly tenuous after February 1956, when Khrushchev launched an unexpected denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party. Khrushchev attacked Stalin over the purges of the 1930s and the defeats of the early years of the Second World War, which he blamed on Stalin's overly-trusting attitude towards Hitler and the purges of the Red Army command structure. Molotov was the most senior of Stalin's collaborators still in government and had played a leading role in the purges, so it became evident that Khrushchev's examination of the past would probably result in the fall from power of Molotov, who became the leader of an old-guard faction that sought to overthrow Khrushchev.[92]

Molotov (far left) with Khrushchev (second from right) and Premier Nikolai Bulganin (to the left of Khrushchev) in 1955 at a gala reception in Moscow for the visit of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (centre left)

In June 1956, Molotov was removed as Foreign Minister;

de-Stalinisation campaign, including the removal of Stalin's body from Lenin's Mausoleum, Molotov, along with Lazar Kaganovich, was removed from all positions and expelled from the Communist Party.[80] In 1962, all of Molotov's party documents and files were destroyed by the authorities.[96]

Later life

Vyacheslav Molotov on the cover of Time, 20 April 1953

In retirement, Molotov remained unrepentant about his role under Stalin's rule.[97] In 1968, United Press International reported that Molotov had completed his memoirs but that they would likely never be published.[98] The first signs of Molotov's rehabilitation were seen during Leonid Brezhnev's rule, when information about him was again allowed to be included in Soviet encyclopaedias. His connection, support and work in the Anti-Party Group were mentioned in encyclopaedias published in 1973 and 1974, but eventually disappeared altogether by the mid-to-late-1970s. Later, Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko further rehabilitated Molotov.[99] In 1984, Molotov was even allowed to seek membership in the Communist Party.[100] A collection of interviews with Molotov from the period 1969 to 1986 was published in 1993 by Felix Chuev as Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics.[101]

In June 1986, Molotov was hospitalised in Kuntsevo Hospital in Moscow, where he eventually died, during the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, on 8 November 1986.[102][103] During his life, Molotov had suffered seven heart attacks, but survived to the age of 96. At the time of his death, he was the last surviving major participant in the events of 1917. He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.[97]

Legacy

Molotov, like Stalin, was pathologically mistrustful of others; much crucial information has disappeared. As Molotov once said, "One should listen to them, but it is necessary to check up on them. The intelligence officer can lead you to a very dangerous position.... There are many provocateurs here, there, and everywhere."

socialist states were part of a larger, supranational entity. In retirement, Molotov criticized Nikita Khrushchev for being a "right-wing deviationist."[107]

For lack of better weapons, Soviet tanks in the Winter War were often destroyed with satchel charges and Molotov cocktails, a name coined by the Finnish defenders.[108][109] The name was a pejorative reference to the Soviet foreign minister.

The

cluster bombs against Finnish civilians, troops and fortifications. When Molotov claimed in radio broadcasts that they were not bombing but rather delivering food to the starving Finns, the Finns started to call the air bombs Molotov bread baskets.[111] Soon they responded by attacking advancing tanks with "Molotov cocktails," which were "a drink to go with the food." According to Montefiore, the Molotov cocktail was one part of Molotov's cult of personality that the vain Premier surely did not appreciate.[112]

Metternich, would welcome him to their company, if there be another world to which Bolsheviks allow themselves to go."[113] The former US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said: "I have seen in action all the great international statesmen of this century. I have never seen such personal diplomatic skill at so high a degree of perfection as Molotov's."[103]

Molotov was the only person to have shaken hands with Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Heinrich Himmler.[114] At the end of 1989 the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union and Mikhail Gorbachev's government formally denounced the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[115]

In January 2010, a Ukrainian court accused Molotov and other Soviet officials of organizing a man-made famine in Ukraine in 1932–33. The same Court then ended criminal proceedings against them, as the trial would be posthumous.[116]

Portrayals in media

Decorations and awards

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Before 1946, the title of the office was People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
  2. ^ Before 1946, the title of the office was First Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.
  3. ^ In this name that follows East Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Mikhaylovich and the family name is Molotov.
  4. ^ ‹The template Lang-rus is being considered for deletion.› Russian: Вячеслав Михайлович Молотов, IPA: [vʲɪtɕɪˈslaf mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ˈmolətəf]
  5. ^ ‹The template Lang-rus is being considered for deletion.› Russian: Скря́бин, IPA: [ˈskrʲæbʲɪn]

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Further reading

See also:
Bibliography of the Post Stalinist Soviet Union

Primary sources

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vyacheslav Molotov.
Political offices
Preceded by
Alexey Rykov
 Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars
1930–1941 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Minister of Foreign Affairs
1939–1949
1953–1956 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Succeeded by
Preceded by
Vasiliy Pisarev
 Soviet Ambassador to Mongolia
1957–1960 		Succeeded by
Alexei Khvorostukhin
Preceded by Soviet Representative to International Atomic Energy Agency
1960–1962 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by
position created
(chairman of revkom)
 Secretary of the Communist Party of Donetsk Governorate
1920–1920 		Succeeded by
Taras Kharchenko
Andrei Radchenko
Preceded by
Stanislav Kosior
(temporary)
 First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine
1920–1921 		Succeeded by
Feliks Kon (acting)
Preceded by
Nikolai Uglanov
 Secretary of the Communist Party of Moscow Governorate
1928–1929 		Succeeded by
Karl Bauman
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