Olga Vladimirovna Pilatskaia

Born July 18 (30), 1884, in Moscow; died Dec. 22, 1937. Russian revolutionary. Member of the Communist Party from 1904.

The daughter of a mechanic, Pilatskaia took part in the December Armed Uprising of 1905 in Moscow and was a member of the city’s district committee of the RSDLP. From 1909 to 1910 she was a member of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. In 1910, Pilatskaia was arrested and was exiled to Saratov. Subsequently, together with her husband, V. M. Zagorskii, she worked in the Bolshevik organization in Leipzig and had occasion to meet with V. I. Lenin. In 1914 she undertook party work in Moscow. After the February Revolution of 1917, Pilatskaia was a party organizer for the Gorodskoi district of Moscow. During the October Days, she was a member of the district’s Military Revolutionary Committee.

From 1918 to 1922, Pilatskaia was a member of the Moscow provincial Cheka and secretary of the agitation and propaganda section of the Central Committee of the RCP(B). She began party work in the Ukraine in 1922. From 1926 to 1930 she headed the women’s section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine (Bolshevik). She was a member of the Orgburo (Organizational Bureau) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine (Bolshevik) between 1927 and 1930. From 1930 to 1937, Pilatskaia was deputy chairman of the Gosplan (State Planning Commission) of the Ukrainian SSR. During the same period, she was director of the Institute of the Red Professors under the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee between 1932 and 1934 and director of the Institute of the History of the Party and the October Revolution in the Ukraine under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine (Bolshevik) from 1934 to 1936.

Pilatskaia was a delegate to the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Congresses of the ACP(B) and to the Sixth Congress of the Comintern. She was a member of the Soviet delegation to the World Congress of Women Against War and Fascism in Paris in 1934. She was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and of the Presidium of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee.