Nikolai Aleksandrovich Uglanov (Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Угла́нов; December 5, 1886 – May 31, 1937) was a RussianBolshevik politician and Soviet statesman who played an important role in the government of the Soviet Union as a Communist Party leader in the city of Moscow during the 1920s. Uglanov was closely associated with the so-called "Right Opposition" associated with Soviet party leader Nikolai Bukharin 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 Russianpeasant 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 metal worker.[1] Nikolai moved between jobs with some regularity and often returned home to Yaroslavl in between jobs.[1]
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.[1] Uglanov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party himself in 1907.[1] As a young party activist Uglanov contributed material to the Bolshevik party paper Pravda as a worker-correspondent.[1]
Uglanov was arrested for the first time by the Okhrana 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.[1] In November 1914 Uglanov was severely wounded and was returned to Petrograd (St. Petersburg), where he recovered and resumed his secret revolutionary activity.[1]
Uglanov was sent to the city of Nizhny Novgorod in 1922 where he was made the head of the regional party organization.[1] In 1923 he would be elevated to a full member of the Central Committee of the RKP(b).[3] He would remain as head of the Nizhny Novgorod organization until the summer of 1924.[1]
In August 1924 Uglanov was called to Moscow, where he was made the second secretary of the Communist Party in the city.[1] He was promoted to first secretary that same October.[1]
Nikolai Uglanov after his arrest by the NKVD in 1936
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 Moscow. Uglanov was expelled from the Party along with Ryutin in autumn 1932 in what is known as the Ryutin Affair.
He was arrested on 23 August 1936, sentenced to death on 31 May 1937 and shot the same day.[4]
Footnotes
^ abcdefghijklmnoCatherine 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.
^ abR.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.
