The Dzerzhinsky Gorkom of the VKP(b) was the city committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in Dzerzhinsk, operating within the Gorky Krai. The body exercised party leadership over the city during its emergence as a major USSR.

Gorkom Leaders

The First Secretary of the gorkom from September 1931 to October 1935 was Pavel Vasilyevich Batashov (1886–1971).[1] A native of Tula and a member of the RSDLP(b) since 1912, he worked as a factory laborer in Tula, Petrograd, and the Urals before 1917. From 1918 to 1920 he served as a military commissar in Lysva, Ufa, Samara, and Krasnoyarsk. He subsequently held party and Soviet positions in Perm Governorate, Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Sarapul. Pavel Batashov. In 1935–1936 he was undergoing medical treatment; in 1936–1937 he headed the Dzerzhinsky City Soviet; from 1937 he was unable to work due to ill health. In 1938 he was expelled from the party and arrested on charges of associations with "enemies of the people"; in February 1940 he was released after the case was dropped. From 1942 to 1945 he served as a political officer at the Dzerzhinsky evacuation hospital, after which he retired. He was awarded the The Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945."[1]

Batashov's successor in 1935–1936 was Mark Lvovich Yelin (10 [23] December 1902 – 3 October 1936).[2] A native of Lugansk and a participant in the Civil War, he was engaged in Komsomol work in Lugansk from 1920 to 1925, then held positions in the South-Eastern Bureau of the CC of the RYLCM and in the CC of the VLKSM. In 1930 he graduated from the Institute of Red Professorship, after which he headed the preparatory department of the Institute of Red Professorship in Nizhny Novgorod (1930–1932). He then successively served as head of the cultural and propaganda department of the Gorky city committee of the VKP(b) (1932–1933), secretary of the Sverdlovsky district committee of the VKP(b) in Gorky, and head of the department of culture and propaganda of Leninism of the Gorky Krai committee of the VKP(b) (1933–1935).[2] On 13 April 1936, Yelin was arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary terrorist activity and sentenced to the supreme penalty. He was shot in Moscow; his ashes were interred at the Donskoe Cemetery. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 6 June 1956.[2]

Historical Context

The Gorky Krai, within which the gorkom operated, was formed in 1929 and existed until 1936. The gorkom's activity fell during the years of forced industrialization, when Dzerzhinsk as a key center of the country's chemical industry. City party committees of that period functioned as the primary administrative instrument at the local level.[1]

Sources

  1. vasilievaa.narod.ru — LEADERS OF NIZHNY NOVGOROD REGION
  2. names52.ru — Yelin Mark Lvovich
  3. sakharov-center.ru — Martyrology: Victims of Political Repression Shot and Buried in Moscow and the Moscow Region in the Period from 1918 to 1953