Stanislav Kosior

Born Nov. 6 (18), 1889, in Vengrov (Węgrów), now in Poland; died Feb. 26, 1939. Soviet statesman and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1907. Son of a worker.

Kosior was a worker and conducted party work in the Donbas, Kharkov, Poltava, Kiev, and Moscow. He was persecuted on numerous occasions. After the February Revolution of 1917, Kosior became a member of the Narva-Petergof regional committee of the party and a member of the St. Petersburg committee and the executive commission of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). He was a delegate to the Seventh (April) Conference and the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B). Kosior was chairman of the expanded session of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP(B), which took place on October 15 (28), 1917, and at which the practical questions concerning the preparation for the armed uprising were discussed. Kosior took part in the October Revolution of 1917 and was commissar of the Petrograd military revolutionary committee. Kosior joined the Left Communists at the time of the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (in Russian, the Brest Treaty of Peace). In 1918 he led illegal party work in the Ukraine, which was occupied by German troops. He was one of the organizers of the Communist Party of the Ukraine (Bolshevik), or CPU(B), and became secretary of the underground Right-bank Ukraine committee of the CPU(B) in October 1918. Kosior was a member of the regional party committee for the preparation of an armed uprising in the Ukraine. In 1919, heading the Frontline bureau of the Central Committee of the CPU(B), Kosior directed underground work behind the lines of Denikin’s troops. He became secretary of the Central Committee of the CPU(B) in 1920 and secretary of the Siberian bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) in 1922. Kosior was secretary of the Central Committee of the ACP (Bolshevik) from 1925 to 1928 and became general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPU(B) in July 1928.He became deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR and chairman of the Commission of Soviet Control in January 1938.

He was a delegate to the Twelfth through Seventeenth Party Congresses and was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) at the Twelfth Congress and a full member of the Central Committee at the Thirteenth through Seventeenth Congresses.Kosior became a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) in 1927 and a full member of the Politburo in 1930. He was a delegate to the Sixth and Seventh Congresses of the Comintern. Kosior was a member of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. He was awarded the Order of Lenin.