Dmitrii Manuilskii

Born Sept. 21 (Oct. 3), 1883, in the village of Sviatets, now Manuil’skoe, Khmel’nitskii Oblast; died Feb. 22, 1959, in Kiev. Soviet statesman and party figure; member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR from 1945. Member of the Communist Party from 1903. Son of a peasant.

Manuil’skii began to study at the University of St. Petersburg in 1903. He graduated from the Sorbonne in France in 1911. In 1905 he was a member of a collegium of agitators under the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP. In 1906 he was one of the organizers of the Kronstadt, and later of the Sveaborg, armed uprisings. He was arrested and sentenced to exile but fled from prison to Kiev, where he joined the committee of the RSDLP. From 1907 to 1912 he lived in emigration in France and was an Otzovist member of the Vpered group. From 1912 to 1913 he carried on party work in St. Petersburg and Moscow and then emigrated once again to France. In May 1917 he returned to Russia and was a member of the Mezhraiontsy (Interfaction) Organization. At the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) he joined the party of the Bolsheviks. In October 1917 he was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee. During the Kerensky-Krasnov mutiny he was commissar of Krasnoe Selo. In December 1917, Manuil’skii became a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Food Supplies. In 1918 he became a member of the All-Ukrainian Revolutionary Committee and people’s commissar of land of the Ukrainian SSR.

In 1922 he began work in the Comintern; he became a member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECC) in 1924. From 1928 to 1943 he was a secretary of the ECC and headed the delegation of the ACP (Bolshevik) to the ECC. At the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Party Congresses he delivered reports on the activities of the delegation of the ACP(B) in the ECC. From 1942 to 1944 he worked in the Central Committee of the ACP(B) and in the Chief Political Administration of the Workers’ and Peasants Red Army. In July 1944 he became vice-chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR and people’s commissar of foreign affairs of the Ukrainian SSR. From 1946 to 1953, Manuil’skii served as vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1945 he headed the delegation of the Ukrainian SSR to the international conference in San Francisco. In 1946 he headed such a delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. He took part in the work of the first four sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Manuil’skii was a delegate to the Tenth through Nineteenth Congresses of the Party. At the Eleventh Congress he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee; at the Twelfth through Eighteenth Congresses he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the ACP(B). He was a delegate to the Second through Seventh Congresses of the Comintern and a member of the ECC from the Third Congress in 1921. Manuil’-skii was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. He was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet at the second and third convocations. He was the author of many works on questions of the strategy and tactics of the international labor and communist movements. He also wrote reminiscences of V. I. Lenin. He retired with a special pension in 1953. He was awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, and various medals.