Mikhail Borodin

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Mikhail Markovich Borodin (Михаи́л Mapkóвич Бороди́н) (July 9, 1884, Yanovich, modern Belarus—May 29, 1951, somewhere in Siberia) was the alias of Mikhail Gruzenberg; he was a Comintern agent.

Borodin joined the Bolshevik party in Imperial Russia in 1903. In 1907, he was arrested and chose to depart for the United States in 1908. While there, he attended classes at Valparaiso University. After the October Revolution, he returned to his motherland in 1918, working in the foreign relations department. From 1919 to 1922, he worked in Mexico, the United States and the United Kingdom as a Comintern agent.

Between 1923 and 1927, Borodin was representative of the Comintern and the Soviet Union to the Kuomintang government in Canton, China. He was a prominent advisor to Dr. Sun Yat Sen at that time. Following his suggestion, the Kuomintang opened itself to Leninist ideas, communists were allowed to join, and the Whampoa Military Academy was established.

After Dr. Sun Yat Sen's death in 1925, he remained an advisor to the Kuomintang government until 1928, when Chiang Kai-Shek purged communists and sought to have him arrested. Borodin returned to the Soviet Union in 1928 and worked briefly as editor of the English language Moscow News.

In 1949, he was accused of being an enemy of the Soviet Union and was sent to a gulag in Siberia, where he died two years later.

Kenneth Rexroth mentions Borodin in his poem Another Early Morning Exercise.