Nikolai Aleksandrovich Uglanov (; December 5, 1886 – May 31, 1937) was a Russian

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

politician and Soviet statesman who played an important role in the government of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

as a Communist Party leader in the city of

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

during the 1920s. Uglanov was closely associated with the so-called "

Right Opposition The Right Opposition () or Right Tendency () in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was a label formulated by Joseph Stalin in Autumn of 1928 for the opposition against certain measures included within the first five-year plan, an oppos ...

" associated with Soviet party leader

Nikolai Bukharin Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (; rus, Николай Иванович Бухарин, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ bʊˈxarʲɪn; – 15 March 1938) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist theorist. A prominent Bolshevik ...

and he fell from his leadership position during the mass collectivization campaign of 1929. Uglanov was arrested in the summer of 1936 and was executed the following spring during the secret police terror of 1937–38.

Biography

Early years

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Uglanov was born 5 December 1886 to an ethnic Russian

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasan ...

family in the village of Feodoritskoye in Yaroslavl Governorate, located approximately 250 kilometers (160 mi) northeast of Moscow. His father Aleksander Uglanov supplemented the family income by working seasonally in the city of St. Petersburg and at the age of 12 Nikolai followed him there, working as an

apprentice Apprenticeship is a system for training a potential new practitioners of a Tradesman, trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study. Apprenticeships may also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in ...

metal worker. Catherine Merridale, ''Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin: The Communist Party in the Capital, 1925–32.'' New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990; pg. 29. Nikolai moved between jobs with some regularity and often returned home to Yaroslavl in between jobs. Uglanov was introduced to radical ideas at an early age, beginning his participation in the revolutionary movement in 1903, distributing illegal literature and storing sensitive documents for underground activists. Uglanov joined the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP) or the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDP), was a socialist political party founded in 1898 in Minsk, Russian Empire. The ...

himself in 1907. As a young party activist Uglanov contributed material to the Bolshevik party paper ''

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...

'' as a worker-correspondent. Uglanov was arrested for the first time by the

Okhrana The Department for the Protection of Public Safety and Order (), usually called the Guard Department () and commonly abbreviated in modern English sources as the Okhrana ( rus , Охрана, p=ɐˈxranə, a=Ru-охрана.ogg, t= The Guard) w ...

early in the summer of 1914 but he was subsequently released from captivity and inducted into the Army and sent to the front lines to fight for the Tsarist regime in

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. In November 1914 Uglanov was severely wounded and was returned to Petrograd (St. Petersburg), where he recovered and resumed his secret revolutionary activity.

Political career

During the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

Uglanov was a member of the Petrograd Soviet. Uglanov became a

functionary An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless of whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority (either their own or that of the ...

in the Soviet

trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

movement and was selected as the head of the Petrograd Guberniia council of trade unions in 1919.' In February 1921 Uglanov succeeded Sergey Zorin as secretary of the Petrograd guberniia committee of the Russian Communist Party KP(b) In this capacity he played a role in the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, activity for which he was awarded the

Order of the Red Banner The Order of the Red Banner () was the first Soviet military decoration. The Order was established on 16 September 1918, during the Russian Civil War by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. It was the highest award of S ...

. He was also made a candidate member of the governing Central Committee of the Communist Party in that year.R.W. Davies, et al. (eds.), ''Soviet Government Officials, 1922–41: A Handlist.'' Birmingham, England: Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, 1989; pg. 394. Uglanov was sent to the city of

Nizhny Novgorod Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət, t=Lower Newtown; colloquially shortened to Nizhny) is a city and the administrative centre of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast an ...

in 1922 where he was made the head of the regional party organization. In 1923 he would be elevated to a full member of the Central Committee of the RKP(b). He would remain as head of the Nizhny Novgorod organization until the summer of 1924. In August 1924 Uglanov was called to Moscow, where he was made the second secretary of the Communist Party in the city. He was promoted to first secretary that same October. Nicolai Uglanov

* 20 August 1924 – November 27, 1928, First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party * August 1924 – replaced Isaak Zelensky on the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee * 1 January 1926 elected candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union * 29 November 1928 — 1 July 1930, People's Commissar for Labour In 1930 he became associated with Martemyan Ryutin, whose name was given to the ''Ryutin Platform''. Ryutin was Secretary of the Krasnaya Presnya district Party committee in

. Uglanov was expelled from the Party along with Ryutin in autumn 1932 in what is known as the Ryutin Affair. On 21 August 1936, during the first of the Moscow show trials, featuring

Grigory Zinoviev Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev (born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky; – 25 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A prominent Old Bolsheviks, Old Bolshevik, Zinoviev was a close associate of Vladimir Lenin prior to ...

and others, the prosecutor

Andrey Vyshinsky Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky (; ) ( – 22 November 1954) was a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat. He is best known as a Procurator General of the Soviet Union, state prosecutor of Joseph Stalin's Moscow Trials and in the Nuremberg trial ...

announced that eight former high-ranking communists, including Uglanov, were under investigation because of evidence given about him at the trial. One of the eight, Mikhail Tomsky committed suicide, and six of the other seven were defendants at the subsequent show trials in 1937 and 1938. The exception was Uglanov, who was arrested on 23 August 1936, and whose name was included on a death list signed by Stalin and three others on May 15, 1937. He was sentenced to death at a closed trial on 31 May, and shot the same day. It can be assumed that he was tried in secret because he could not be relied on to 'confess' in open court to crimes that he had not committed. The historian Robert Conquest, in his history of the Great Purge, comparing him with those who were pressured into making false confessions, wrote:

Footnotes