Olga Pilatskaya was born on 30 July [O.S. 18 July] 1884 in Moscow, into a working-class family. She graduated from the Moscow Mariinsky Women's School.[1][2]
In 1904, she joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and became a member of its Bolshevik faction.[1][2] She was elected to the RSDLP's Moscow district committee and, in 1905, participated in the December Uprising.[1] In 1909, Olga Pilatskaya was elected a member of the Russian Bureau of the RSDLP's Central Committee. But the following year, she was arrested and internally exiled to Saratov.[1][2] She fled abroad with her husband Vladimir Zagorsky, moving to Leipzig, where she worked with Vladimir Lenin.[1] In 1914 she returned home to Moscow, where she carried out underground work for the Bolsheviks.[1][2]
On 9 April 1929, she was put forward as a candidate for the secretariat of the party's central committee, although her candidacy was rejected on 5 June 1930.[2] Instead, she was appointed as deputy chairman of the Ukrainian State Planning Committee, a position she held until 1937.[1][2] During this period, she was a delegate to the 16th Congress and 17th All-Union Communist Party Congresses,[1] worked as director of the Ukrainian Institute of Red Professorship from 1932 to 1934 and as director of the Institute of Party History from 1934 to 1936.[1][2]
