Grigory Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze

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(b. Kutaisi province, Georgia, 12 (24) Oct. 1886; d. Moscow, 18 Feb. 1937) Georgian; chair of Central Control Commission and of Rabkrin (Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate) 1926 – 30, chair of Supreme Council of the National Economy 1930 – 37, Commissar for Heavy Industry 1932 – 7

The son of a minor nobleman, Ordzhonikidze graduated from a medical school in Tiflis in 1905. He had been a Bolshevik member of the RSDLP since 1903 and in 1905 was arrested for smuggling arms. Thereafter he was regularly involved in revolutionary activity, both abroad and at home, especially in Transcaucasia (principally in Baku) and St Petersburg, where he was arrested in 1912 and sentenced to three years' hard labour followed by exile. He returned to Petrograd in June 1917. During the Civil War, when he established a close relationship with his compatriot Stalin, he acted as an Extraordinary Commissar for the Soviet government on the southern front. In 1920 – 1 he was responsible for establishing Soviet power in Armenia and Georgia (where he removed an elected Menshevik government by methods which gave rise to a dispute between Lenin and Stalin). From 1921 to 1926 he was in charge of the new Transcaucasian Republic. In 1926 Stalin brought him to Moscow, using his talents to purge the party and state bureaucracies as chair of the Central Control Commission and the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate (Rabkrin). In 1930 he was promoted to full membership of the Politbureau when he was appointed chair of the Supreme Council of the National Economy. In 1932 he was made Commissar for Heavy Industry, the post for which he is particularly known. However, he became increasingly disillusioned with Stalin and the purges (including the arrest of friends and relatives) and in 1937 he committed suicide (in 1956 Khrushchev alleged that Stalin had forced him to do so).

(1886 - 1937), leading Bolshevik who participated in bringing Ukraine and the Caucasus under Soviet rule and directed industry during the early five-year plans.

Grigory Konstantinovich ("Sergo") Ordzhonikidze was born in Goresha, Georgia, to an impoverished gentry family. In 1903, while training as a medical assistant, he joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, and in 1906 met Josef Stalin, with whom he formed a close, lifelong association. After a time in prison and exile, Ordzhonikidze traveled to Paris where in 1911 he met Vladimir Lenin and studied in the party school. In January the following year, Ordzhonikidze became a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee and organizer of its Russian Bureau. Returning to Russia, he was again arrested in April 1912 and spent the next five years in prison and then Siberian exile. During 1917 Ordzhonikidze was a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. After the Bolshevik takeover, he participated in the civil war in Ukraine and southern Russia and played a leading role in extending Soviet power over Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. A close ally of Stalin, Ordzhonikidze was promoted to the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1921. He remained in charge of the Transcaucasian regional Party organization until 1926, when he became a Politburo candidate member, chairman of the Party's Central Control Commission and commissar of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate (Rabkrin). During the First Five-Year Plan, Ordzhonikidze organized the drive for mass industrialization. In 1930 he was promoted to full Politburo membership and in 1932 was appointed commissar for heavy industry. During the mid-1930s, Ordzhonikidze sought to use his proximity to Stalin to temper the Soviet leader's increasing use of repression against party and economic officials. Although Ordzhonikidze's sudden death in early 1937 was officially attributed to a heart attack, it is more likely that, in an act of desperate protest at the impending terror, he committed suicide.

Bibliography

Haupt, Georges, and Marie, Jean - Jacques, eds. (1974). Makers of the Russian Revolution. London: Allen and Unwin.

Khlevniuk, Oleg V. (1995). In Stalin's Shadow: The Career of "Sergo" Ordzhonikidze. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

—NICK BARON