Aleksandr Shcherbakov

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Aleksandr Shcherbakov was a founding member of the Soviet Writers' Union, along with Maxim Gorky. Following the latter's death in 1936, Shcherbakov was transferred from his role as First Secretary to the lower role of Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee where he reported to Andrei Zhdanov. He was also a notable critic of Ivan Gronsky.

During the Great Patriotic War, Shcherbakov served as the head of the political department of the Red Army in Moscow. According to Antony Beevor's book, Stalingrad, The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943, "One of the richest sources in the Russian Ministry of Defence central archive at Podolsk consists of the very detailed reports sent daily from the Stalingrad Front to Aleksandr Shcherbakov."

Shcherbakov died of heart failure in 1945, and the following year the town of Rybinsk was renamed Shcherbakov in his honour (and reverted in 1957).