Nikolai Kolotilov

Born May 1 (13), 1885; died Aug. 13, 1937. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1903. Born in the village of Rimikha, Shuia District, Vladimir Province; son of a peasant; a worker.

Kolotilov became a member of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk committee of the RSDLP in 1904. He participated in the Revolution of 1905–07 and organized a fighting druzhina (armed workers’ detachment) together with M. V. Frunze. From 1907 he engaged in party work in Perm’ and was a member of the Perm’ committee of the RSDLP. He was subjected to repression several times. Returning to Ivanovo-Voznesensk after the February Revolution of 1917, Kolotilov became secretary of the city committee and then of the provincial committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik); he participated in the October Revolution of 1917. He was editor of the newspaper Rabochii krai in 1918.

Kolotilov was chairman of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk provincial executive committee in 1919–20 and chairman of the Gomel’ provincial revolutionary committee and of the Gomel’ provincial executive committee in 1920–21; he was chairman of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk provincial executive committee in 1921–22. Kolotilov was elected secretary of the Don committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) in 1922 and secretary of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk provincial (later, oblast) committee of the ACP (Bolshevik) in 1925. From 1932, Kolotilov was chairman of the central committee of the trade union of workers in education and a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. He was a delegate to the Twelfth through Seventeenth Party Congresses; he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) at the Twelfth Congress and a full member at the Thirteenth through Sixteenth Congresses. He was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.