Stanislav Kosior

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Stanisław Kosior

Trofim Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935. At the back left to right are Kosior, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrei Andreyev and Joseph Stalin.

Stanislav Kosior or Kossior (Russian: Станислав Викентьевич Косиор, Ukrainian: Станіслав Вікентійович Косіор, Polish: Stanisław Kosior) (November 18 [O.S. November 6] 1889 – February 26, 1939) was one of three brothers Kosiors, Polish-born Soviet politicians. He was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR, and deputy prime minister of the USSR. Among others, he was responsible for the Holodomor in Ukraine. Arrested by the NKVD, he was killed during the Great Purge.

[edit] Biography

Stanisław Kosior was born in 1889 in Węgrów in Siedlce gubernia of Imperial Russia, which is the Polish region of Podlachia, to a family of humble factory workers. Because of poverty, he was forced to emigrate to Yuzovka (modern Donetsk), where he started working at one of the steel mills. In 1907 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and quickly became the head of the local branch of the party. In 1913 he was transferred to Moscow and then to Kiev and Kharkov, where he headed the forming of local cells of the communist organisations. In 1915 he was arrested by the Okhranka and forcibly resettled to Siberia.

After the February Revolution he moved to Petersburg, where he headed the local branch of the Bolsheviks and the Narva municipal committee. After the October Revolution Kosior moved to the German-controlled areas of the Ober-Ost and Ukraine, where he tried to promote the Bolshevik cause. After the Brest Peace Treaty he moved back to Russia, where in 1920 he became the secretary of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and since 1922 he headed the Siberian branch of the communist party. Between 1925 and 1928 he was a secretary of the party's central committee and in 1928 he became Secretary General of the Ukrainian SSR Communist Party (KP(b)U). Among his tasks was conducting the forcible collectivization, which resulted with the Great Famine in 1931 and 1932.

In 1930 he was admitted to the politburo and in 1935 he was granted the Order of Lenin. In January 1938 he also became head of the Soviet Control Office deputy prime minister of the USSR. However, with the advent of the Great Purge, by order of Joseph Stalin, on May 3, 1938 Kosior was deprived of all party posts and arrested by the NKVD; on February 26, 1939 he was sentenced to death by shooting and executed the same day. He was rehabilitated on March 14, 1956.