On the 140th anniversary of the birth of Grigory Konstantinovich (Sergo) Ordzhonikidze

One of the ancient Georgian chronicles states: “It is not our custom, Georgians, to turn our backs on an enemy approaching us, refusing to fight, even if death threatens.” Therefore, the word “gamarjoba”—victory—has long served as a heartfelt greeting with which Georgians honor each other.

This is precisely how the man lived, not with his back to all winds and adversity, but facing it head-on, a man whose name remains a symbol of revolutionary passion, party valor, and tireless labor. It’s no wonder that Grigory Ordzhonikidze was referred to in police reports as “Straight.” He walked triumphantly through the crucible of three revolutions. Over the course of his fleeting half-century, he traversed that path of struggle, heavy losses, and heroic achievements, fraught with mortal danger, which, in one way or another, all the pupils of Lenin’s school of Caucasian Bolsheviks were destined to traverse.

Lenin once wrote to Gorky: “Here and in the Caucasus, Social-Democratic Georgians, Armenians, Tatars, and Russians worked together in a single Social-Democratic organization for more than ten years. This isn’t just a phrase, but a proletarian solution to the national question. The only solution.” Stalin, recalling his first steps in the labor movement, repeatedly remarked on the same thing: groups of Russian Marxists had a great influence on him, and it was they who instilled in him a taste for underground Marxist literature.

Along with many of those whom revolutionary fate had cast to the Caucasus, the professional underground fighter with the telling nickname “Sergo” would later find himself shoulder to shoulder with party and state affairs. He would become friends with Sergei Alliluyev, Kliment Voroshilov, and Mikhail Kalinin. A fraternal bond would forever bind him to “Kirych”—Sergei Kirov.

He left an indelible impression on everyone who came into contact with him—from the first illegal gatherings to the great era of Soviet industrial giants—for the rest of their lives. “And now, when my memory turns to Grigory Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze—Comrade Sergo,” wrote Bolshevik Party veteran Evgenia Solovey of him, “I am immersed in a living and vibrant world, a world filled with the poetry and romance of creative struggle, directed toward one great goal: to make human life truly happy.”

Enemy of the rotten system

"Article list No. 209. Last name, first name, patronymic. Ordzhonikidze Grigory Konstantinov. Height 2 arshins and 6 vershoks, good build, black eyes and hair, white complexion.

What category of criminal does he belong to? — A convict, convicted for the third time. Found guilty of escaping from his place of detention for the first time and living under a false passport. Deprived of all civil rights.

Should he be in shackles or without them? - In leg shackles."

A few lines of prison records should seem to convey the tragedy and hopelessness of a broken life. He, a nobleman by birth, blessed with the vigor of youth, natural intelligence, and talent, should have received a brilliant education and begun building a lucrative career as a doctor at the time. Across the vast empire of 130 million, their number barely reached 28,000. Smallpox, cholera, typhus, and malaria were rampant.

But such was not the calling of the prematurely orphaned graduate of the Tiflis paramedic school. The era of “small deeds,” celebrated in Russian literature of the late 19th century, was irrevocably fading into the past. The looming, menacing era of world wars and class struggles imperatively demanded a different scale of thought, a versatility of skills, and an unwavering spirit.

In 1903, at the age of seventeen, Grigory joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which was rocked by controversy, almost immediately making a clear choice in favor of its Bolshevik wing. A little over a year later, he was arrested for possessing and distributing that very same illegal Marxist literature and training combat squads.

Simon Ter-Petrosyan (Kamo) became the first “beacon” and mentor in the revolution for the budding underground fighter. But even this legendary figure with an iron grip and magnetic charm revered the “Caucasian Lenin,” then nicknamed “Koba.” “What will happen?” wrote the young Stalin in one of the proclamations of the pivotal year of 1905. “With trembling and bated breath, all of Russia awaits the answer to this question. The proletariat challenges the accursed two-headed monster. Will this challenge be followed by a real fight, will the strike develop into an open armed uprising, or, like previous strikes, will it “peacefully” end and “die down”?”

The country’s future, like the future of the young fighters against autocracy, is truly shrouded in uncertainty. For now, Ordzhonikidze’s life’s journey leads through Berlin. Here, the Caucasian Marxist expands his circle of acquaintances among the social democratic émigré community and attempts to master German, in order to acquire the technical knowledge so essential in the age of scientific progress.

However, the will of the party would soon return Grigory to his homeland. The year of the bloody suppression of the First Russian Revolution marked the beginning of the almost uninterrupted period of exile and penal servitude in this turbulent, constantly risk-filled life. Its chronology can be easily traced by the list of places of imprisonment: Tiflis Prison, Bail Prison in Baku, Sukhumi Prison, Shlisselburg Fortress and the Kresty Prison in St. Petersburg, and the Aleksandrovsky Central Prison in the Irkutsk District.

In between, with brief intervals, there were exiles—to the Siberian village of Potoskuy and to the Yakut village of Pokrovskoye. In 1908 alone, he was tried three times. And each time, a new, increasingly serious criminal charge was added. He was declared a particularly dangerous state criminal and stripped of “all civil rights.” “I continue my journey today, to the clanking and rattling of my shackles… and I feel like stone,” Sergo wrote in a letter from his transit point.

What was the reason for such merciless and methodical reprisals? Ordzhonikidze himself later recalled: “In the autumn of 1907, the Baku proletariat erupted in struggle over the collective agreement and the meeting with the oil industrialists… And we launched a massive campaign to draft mandates and elect delegates. For about 10 days, or even two weeks, the workers’ parliament met freely in Baku. This was a time when the black reaction had already triumphed in Russia.” It was this milestone that linked Ordzhonikidze’s pre-revolutionary biography with Stalin’s political development: their close acquaintance took place in Cell No. 3 of the Bail Prison.

Escapes from exile and illegal trips abroad would be rare sips of freedom in the grim period of captivity. In 1910, Sergo found himself in Paris, attending the Longjumeau Party School. Here he saw Lenin for the first time. Here, the “flower” of the future Soviet Republic would lecture him: Inessa Armand on political economy, Nikolai Semashko on social security, David Ryazanov on the theory and practice of the trade union movement, and Anatoly Lunacharsky on literature and art.

The powerful intellectual impetus received at the “Leninist workers’ university” will greatly enhance the desire for self-education. A diligent and thoughtful reader will jot down the title and author of every book they read in a special notebook. It will include the names of Pushkin and Nekrasov, Shakespeare and Molière, Tolstoy and Turgenev, Goethe and Schiller, Herzen and Chernyshevsky, Balzac and Stendhal, Gorky and Korolenko, Wells and London, Veresaev and Sergeyev-Tsensky. Once Ordzhonikidze’s name becomes known throughout the country, one of his life rules will be passed down by word of mouth: “If you don’t know, ask. A Bolshevik is, first and foremost, an intellectual. Intelligence is not determined by a diploma. The soul must be intelligent, honest, principled, and convinced.”

The Leninists’ long-standing, persistent struggle against pernicious deviations within the RSDLP led to the Sixth Party Conference in Prague, where Bolshevism finally organizationally emerged as an independent political force in 1912. The election of “Comrade Sergo” to the Central Committee was not only a reward for his dedication to the party cause but also a recognition of his enormous personal potential. No less important was the formation of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee—a practical center for directing all revolutionary work directly within Russia. The reference book for many generations of party members, “A Short Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks),” spoke sparingly of this: “The Russian Bureau of the Central Committee included, in addition to Comrade Stalin, Comrades Ya. Sverdlov, S. Spandaryan, S. Ordzhonikidze, M. Kalinin, and Goloshchekin.”

The laconic formulation of the party textbook conceals a great mystery. To this day, it remains unclear how these people, who spent half their lives in prisons and exile, considered ardent haters of any state system, acquired, within a few years, an all-encompassing statist mentality and unparalleled patriotism.

Fiery fighter of October

The rebellious southerner would greet the turbulent spring of 1917 amidst the vast, snow-covered Yakut latitudes, in “eternal exile” after three years of imprisonment in shackles beneath the oppressive vaults of the Shlisselburg penal prison. The former political exile would not return to the radically changed capital alone. Now, his faithful companion, Zinaida Gavrilovna, was with him. “In the second half of June 1917, we arrived in St. Petersburg,” she recounts in her book, “The Path of a Bolshevik.” “We settled into G.I. Petrovsky’s apartment. Sergo immediately threw himself into revolutionary work. He left home early in the morning and returned only late at night. He was assigned to one of the city’s working-class outskirts—the Narvskaya Zastava.”

The family’s temporary refuge, the modest home of a former deputy of the Fourth Tsarist Duma, was not chosen by chance. Grigory Petrovsky and Yemelyan Yaroslavsky were serving their exile with Sergo. The three of them telegraphed revolutionary Petrograd on an April day: “To Lenin. From Yakutsk. We celebrate your return to open activity. Long live the revived International!” Ordzhonikidze, nominated for the Petrograd Party Committee and the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, passionately promoted Lenin’s course—the peaceful transition from bourgeois revolution to socialist—at factory rallies and in soldiers’ barracks.

Lenin’s return to his homeland ushered in a frenzied campaign of slander about a “sealed train,” “Kaiser spies,” and “German money.” “The ‘case’ of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party was so crudely fabricated that I was astonished,” fumed professional counterintelligence officer Tsarist General M.D. Bonch-Bruyevich. “The accusations seemed to me as senseless as they were dishonest. It was clear that all this was done solely to compromise the leadership of a political party hostile to the Provisional Government.”

Today, more than a century later, this crude and base nonsense is still practiced by various libelists like the Dyukovs and the Arutyunovs. Back then, hiding behind the fig leaf of “legality,” the Menshevik chairman of the Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee, Chkheidze, demagogically declared: “Lenin is obliged to report to the prosecutor. Only a public trial can clear him of the charges.”

Branding the false “patriots” as “despicable jailers,” Sergo found himself among those categorically opposed to Lenin’s appearance at the so-called trial. The Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(b), held in July-August 1917, unanimously supported his position: “It is important for them to snatch as many leaders as possible from the ranks of the revolutionary party. We must under no circumstances hand over Comrade Lenin.”

Ensuring the Central Committee’s liaison with the leader, who was in hiding, was one of the most important and honorable assignments the party ever entrusted to Ordzhonikidze. Moreover, according to many of his comrades, Sergo most fondly recalled and was proud of one battle won without bloodshed or casualties. On the historic night of October 25-26, 1917, he succeeded in promoting the armed battalion of scooter riders reserved by Kerensky’s Provisional Government for the destruction of the revolutionary Smolny.

During the triumphant march of Soviet power, the Central Committee dispatched several thousand commissars and agitators across the country to assist local soviets and party committees. Sergo was among them. In the fiery year of 1918, the map of the Soviet Republic resembled a small scarlet spot on an endless black background. A deadly darkness encroached on red Moscow from all sides: from the west, where German and Austrian troops marched through Belarus and the Baltics; from the south, where the Germans, French, and Turks occupied Ukraine and Transcaucasia; from the north, where the British and Americans landed in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk; from the east, where the Japanese held sway in Primorye and Eastern Siberia. Finally, in the very heart of the country, in the Volga region, the White Czechs rose in rebellion.

British War Minister Churchill threatened a “crusade” against Russia by fourteen powers. The Entente imperialists declared a blockade, cutting off all sea and other routes of communication between the workers’ state and the outside world.

In the midst of full-scale foreign intervention, raging counterrevolutionary uprisings, and unbridled White Terror, Ordzhonikidze was forced to establish Soviet power in Minsk and Kharkov, Rostov and Vladikavkaz, Tsaritsyn and Astrakhan, Tiflis and Baku, Borisov and Mogilev, Saratov and Orel. In 1919, General Denikin offered a million for Sergo’s head.

In both the central Russian provinces and the national outskirts, Ordzhonikidze emerged as a great internationalist, a unifier of all working people, regardless of their ethnicity. On February 4, 1918, at his suggestion, the armed Ingush people proclaimed the Mountain Soviet Republic. In June, he delivered the keynote address at the First Congress of Soviets of the North Caucasus, which established a unified North Caucasian Soviet Republic, which declared its incorporation into the RSFSR.

Things were even more difficult beyond the Caucasus Mountains. Here, under the protection of military agents from the US, Great Britain, and France, and with the complicity of the “Great Russian” White Guard, the nationalist regimes of the Georgian Mensheviks, the Azerbaijani Mussavatists, and the Armenian Dashnaks ruled. “Wars between republics over borders—the war between Georgia and Armenia, the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, war within the republics—the destruction and burning of South Ossetia by the Mensheviks, the war between the Mensheviks and the Adjarians, the war with the Abkhazians… The literal massacre between Muslims and Armenians saturates the atmosphere of Transcaucasia with the poison of misanthropy.” Today, it’s hard to believe that these lines were penned by Ordzhonikidze over a hundred years ago.

In September 1920, together with Sergei Kirov, Anastas Mikoyan, and Elena Stasova, he organized the First Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku. Stasova wrote of those unforgettable days: “I recall the preparations for the Congress of the Peoples of the East… Especially the visit of the Georgian comrades to Sergo. They kept asking him, ‘When are you going to Bolshevize us?’, since they had a Menshevik republic.” Stalin then caustically ridiculed the “Georgian nationalist tavern-keepers,” with whom even the renegade Karl Kautsky, driven out of Germany by the revolutionary wave, sought refuge. But even this bankrupt political traveling salesman was forced to admit: “Georgia is sliding inexorably toward Bolshevism.”

During his six years as head of the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), and then the Transcaucasian Regional Party Committee, Orzhonikidze not only managed to curb ethnic strife but also began to seriously address economic issues: restoring the oil and manganese industries, coal mining, and establishing agricultural operations. It was during these years that his talent as a major statesman first became evident.

Thus, in a merciless and bloody struggle for a new life, against medieval savagery and fragmentation, against all manner of bourgeois-nationalist “governments” that had sold out to the interventionists, a voluntary Union of workers and peasants of all nationalities was born for the first time in history. “This union,” wrote Lenin, “is based not on treaties, but on the solidarity of the exploited against the exploiters.”

Guarding party unity

The confrontation with anti-Leninist groups and movements, which sometimes flared up like flames and sometimes smoldered to embers, invested the party’s central control body with a tremendous organizational and political role. At various times, it was headed by such authoritative Bolsheviks as V.V. Kuibyshev, A.A. Andreyev, L.M. Kaganovich, and N.M. Shvernik. During the exceptionally crucial period from 1926 to 1930, G.K. Ordzhonikidze served not only as Chairman of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) but also as People’s Commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection.

Not everyone liked his blunt stand for principle and stern temper. At the fateful Tenth Party Congress (March 1921), voices were raised against his election to the Central Committee: they said he was rude and impossible to deal with. A.I. Mikoyan testified: “Then Lenin spoke in defense of Sergo’s candidacy: I have known Comrade Sergo for a long time, ever since the underground days, as a devoted, active, and fearless revolutionary… But in the criticism of the comrades who spoke, there was one correct remark about Sergo. That is, he shouts at everyone. That’s true. He speaks loudly, but you probably don’t know why… He’s slightly deaf in his left ear,” Lenin said with a particularly soft and warm tone. “That’s why he shouts—he thinks no one can hear him.” Years of persecution and deprivation had indeed taken their toll: in addition to partial hearing loss, Ordzhonikidze had to undergo a kidney removal operation and was plagued by constant heart pain.

While sparing no effort on himself, Sergo was equally demanding of others. He sternly and uncompromisingly attacked any sign of opportunism. The struggle intensified particularly during critical moments when the usual course of events was disrupted, difficulties intensified, and unresolved issues once again came to the fore. During the consolidation of the Soviet state and the beginning of the transition to socialism, three main stages of his struggle can be roughly identified.

The first of these concerns the harsh response to nationalist deviationists who attempted to impose their separatist principles on state-building. The “itch of nationalism” had reached its most advanced stages in Georgia. The Budu Mdivani group stubbornly resisted the creation of a Transcaucasian Soviet Federation of Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, and other fraternal peoples. In its political aspirations, it was not far removed from the Georgian Mensheviks, who had recently carried out ethnic cleansing in the multinational republic.

Many years later, during the people’s accursed time of Gorbachev’s betrayal and the collapse of the great Soviet state, this topic was taken up by the ideological protégés of the CIA agent Yakovlev. Here’s how it was presented in a book with the grandiose title “The Political Testament of V.I. Lenin”: “Ordzhonikidze was directly involved in this matter, failing to demonstrate the required flexibility and caution in his dealings with his opponents in Georgia on the national question, instead imposing hasty decisions by administrative force. Not uncommon in this policy style was the use of physical violence: Ordzhonikidze struck a supporter of Mdivani who had insulted him.”

The false “historians” despicably omitted the fact that the notorious “assault” at the end of 1922 had absolutely nothing to do with the national question. A note by Alexei Rykov, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), preserved in the archives of Lenin’s secretariat, stated: “Akaky Kobakhidze, a member of the RCP and my comrade from exile in Siberia, came to meet me at Comrade Ordzhonikidze’s apartment. During a general conversation, he reproached Sergo for having some kind of horse and for the fact that the comrades at the top, including Comrade Ordzhonikidze, were much better off materially than other party members… Following this, a verbal altercation broke out between them, during which Comrade Ordzhonikidze hit Kobakhidze… In essence, I believe that Comrade Ordzhonikidze was right when he interpreted the reproaches Comrade Kobakhidze made to him as a cruel personal insult.”

The nationalist ruffian and Bukharin and Kamenev, who were their handlers in Moscow, portrayed a domestic squabble between two longtime Georgian acquaintances as a relic of “imperial consciousness” and a relapse into “Great Russian (!) chauvinism.” In fact, the so-called Georgian incident was a ridiculous attempt to drive a wedge between Lenin and Stalin, who traditionally oversaw interethnic relations within the party. But the scheme failed: the following year, at the Second Congress of the Communist Party of Georgia, 1923, only 20 delegates out of 144 supported the nationalist deviationist line. The Mdivani group received an equally unequivocal rebuff at the Twelfth Congress of the RCP(b).

The second stage of the struggle for party unity was determined by the infiltration of those with petty-bourgeois ideology and mentality. The social composition of party ranks had changed during the years of the Civil War and the New Economic Policy. By the time of V.I. Lenin’s death, workers constituted 37.3% of the party; peasants—32.1%; employees—23.1%; and so-called others—7.1%. Moreover, 5.8% of RCP(b) members had previously belonged to other political parties. The influx of fresh forces—488,000 representatives of the working class—was ensured by the Lenin Conscription, announced in January 1924. Later, in 1927, the October Conscription was organized, and in November 1928, the Central Committee plenum set the goal of having at least half of the party’s members be workers by 1930.

Trotskyism emerged as the main danger at this stage of the struggle. It was on this basis that all opportunist elements—the “decists,” the remnants of the “left,” “workers,” “new,” and other oppositions—had rallied to form the Trotskyist-Zinovievist bloc. “The entire foreign bourgeois and social democratic, as well as émigré, press,” said G.K. Ordzhonikidze at the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in December 1927, “publishing the speeches of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other oppositionists, points out that they had always written the same thing, and now, they say, it finds confirmation in the speeches of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky.”

The party branded the dissenters who had secretly formed their faction as a social democratic, or Menshevik, deviation, since the central point of their political “platform” was the denial of the very possibility of a socialist victory in the USSR. Ordzhonikidze issued a stern demand to the Trotskyists that they disarm before the party and immediately disband their factional group. At his insistence, the congress adopted a resolution “On the Opposition,” which stated that the Trotskyist-Zinovievist sect “had embarked on the path of capitulation to the forces of the international and domestic bourgeoisie and had objectively become an instrument of a third force against the regime of the proletarian dictatorship.” Seventy-five active Trotskyists, led by L. Trotsky and G. Zinoviev themselves, were expelled from the party.

The third stage of the struggle, spanning the years between the 15th and 17th Party Congresses, was characterized by a confrontation with the “right-wing danger.” A fierce ideological clash once again unfolded around the country’s economic difficulties, the relationship between the working class and the peasantry, the grain problem, and practical measures for conducting the grain procurement campaign. N. Bukharin, A. Rykov, M. Tomsky, N. Uglanov, M. Ryutin, and others effectively took the kulak under their wing. And once again, Sergo was in the thick of things. Furiously debunking the “rightists,” he throws it in their faces: “Today, perhaps, by unleashing the kulak element, it would be possible to get an extra pood of bread from his hands—although this is also very doubtful—but for tomorrow this would be an intensified offensive of reviving capitalism against us… We must firmly remember that then the question of bringing October to an end, of building socialism in our country, not only would not be resolved, but would be placed under the greatest threat.”

Fierce attacks from both the left and the right—all attempts to divert the country from the true Leninist course—failed. The personal courage, nobility, and impeccable integrity of the Chairman of the Central Control Commission allowed him to be described as the “conscience of the party.”

Commander-in-Chief of Lenin-Stalin industrialization

The overcoming of the rightist deviation coincided with the beginning of a historic, truly monumental task: the transition of a technologically backward country to an advanced economy based on large-scale machine industry. Uglanov, one of the leaders of the “right,” went so far as to say that the party had become overly “industrialized,” or, more simply, “overreached” in the capital construction of heavy industry at the expense of light industry. Such statements were made at a time when the USSR had barely reached the pre-war (1913) level of production of Tsarist Russia. This meant that, occupying a sixth of the world’s land area and the third-largest population in the world, its industrial output amounted to no more than 2.7% of global output.

It’s no surprise that the draft industrial and financial plan for 1927/28, prepared by Uglanov’s “co-religionist”—Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars Rykov—proposed a reduction in capital construction at a number of metallurgical and machine-building enterprises. The Central Committee commission, composed of G.K. Ordzhonikidze, V.V. Kuibyshev, and G.M. Krzhizhanovsky, was forced to radically change the situation: appropriations were increased by 20 million rubles, including for the construction of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant, Mariupol Pipe Plant, and Rosselmash.

To industrialize or not to industrialize—history never gave the world’s first socialist state a choice. But it required a tenacious character, relentless courage, business acumen, and a broad outlook. A year after the adoption of the first five-year plan for 1928/29–1932/33, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR appointed Ordzhonikidze Chairman of the Supreme Council of National Economy, and two years later, People’s Commissar of Heavy Industry.

“The very fact that such a gigantic industrialization program has actually begun to be carried out according to a unified plan should make the capitalist world wary,” noted German journalist K. Ross. “And if this plan succeeds even by a small percentage, it will mean that Russia has won, that it is revolutionizing the global economy.”

The plan for these gigantic works was not simply a success, and not even by a “small percentage.” The developed countries of the West had never experienced such rates of economic growth. (One cannot help but recall the statement by the English professor E. Dillon, who lived in Russia for many years, that Bolshevism “lacked a trace of a constructive or social idea.”) By the end of the 20th century, only China approached Bolshevik rates. By the end of the Second Five-Year Plan (1933-1937), the Soviet Union had become the leader in Europe in terms of gross industrial output, and in particular in mechanical engineering, tractor and truck production, and oil production, and the world in terms of combine harvester production. Compared to 1913 figures, the gross output of large-scale industry by 1937 had increased eightfold. A new, modern production structure was created practically from scratch, meeting the challenges of the global economy. The question of “who will win”—capitalism or socialism—was resolved in the USSR in favor of socialism.

The vital need to rapidly develop a constellation of professionals capable of mastering cutting-edge technology forced the Party to advance a new slogan: “Personnel are everything!” “We witnessed and participated in the turning point that Comrade Ordzhonikidze brought about in scientific endeavors,” wrote Academician A.F. Ioffe. “The research network of the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry is the most powerful army in the Soviet Union.” 683 higher education institutions (in the Russian Empire, their number barely approached 100) began training specialists in the national economy, with a total student population reaching 547,200 by 1937. By comparison, at that time, 420,700 people were studying at universities in England, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan combined.

It’s impossible to even imagine the colossal burden and responsibility that fell on Grigory Konstantinovich’s shoulders. The People’s Commissariat he led consisted of 33 departments overseeing entire sectors of the economy: ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, machine tool manufacturing, locomotive construction, agricultural machinery, mining, and so on. In the near future, each of these sectors would be under the responsibility of a separate all-Union ministry.

The People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry oversaw industrialization not only from its commanding heights but also directly in the heat of the labor fronts: in workshops and mines, at open-hearth furnaces and blast furnaces, at airfields and construction sites. Leningrad, Stalingrad, Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod), Kharkov, Stalino (Donetsk), Dnepropetrovsk, Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia, Mariupol, Makeyevka, Lugansk, Magnitogorsk, Prokopyevsk, Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk, Grozny, Baku, Solikamsk—this is far from a complete list of the industrial strongholds of socialism that Sergo visited repeatedly.

There’s a long-standing expression: “Burned out at work.” Let’s listen to Z.G. Ordzhonikidze again: “Sergo would leave for the People’s Commissariat between 10 and 12 noon, unless there was a meeting of the Central Committee of the Party or the Council of People’s Commissars. He ate lunch irregularly: sometimes at six or seven in the evening, and sometimes at two in the morning. He worked with enormous intensity… In the last days of his life, he was busily preparing a report for the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which was scheduled for February 19. On February 15 and 16, Sergo wrote a lot, jotting down theses on pieces of paper and in a notebook. But Sergo didn’t have time to deliver the report.”

With the onset of the campaign to expose the “cult of personality,” the newly minted anti-Stalinists, of course, could not ignore such a “story” as Sergo’s untimely death on February 18, 1937. Rumors of hostility and confrontation between Stalin and Ordzhonikidze were subsequently greatly exaggerated by mythmakers of the “Soros ilk.” Thus, with the support of the still-active Yeltsin Center and the recently closed “GULAG History Museum,” a certain Kislitsyn published yet another pseudo-historical opus entitled “Party Fronde Under the Axe of the NKVD.” This hoaxer asserts: "The Party Fronde are former oppositionists of the late 1920s and early 1930s. “Of various directions—Trotskyists, Zinovievites, Bukharinites, moderate-minded leaders like Kirov and Ordzhonikidze, fairly independent regional leaders, authoritative army commanders.” It turns out that S.M. Kirov and G.K. Ordzhonikidze, who tirelessly defended Leninism and party unity, were in fact in the same ranks as Trotskyists and Bukharinites! What won’t you hear from the homegrown “Sorosites,” compared to whom even Dr. Goebbels is a mere child…

Did Ordzhonikidze ever have disputes or disagreements with Stalin? Undoubtedly, they did. And how could they be avoided in any major undertaking, especially one as modernizing a vast country? Not just any windbag, but a direct eyewitness—L.M. Kaganovich, the former People’s Commissar of Railways—recalled a curious fact: “Once, after a meeting, we were having dinner with Stalin, and Sergo jokingly said, ‘You keep cutting me back, but you keep satisfying Kaganovich!’” Stalin replied, “It’s not about Kaganovich, it’s about transportation. Without transportation, you’ll all perish. Your heavy industry won’t go anywhere without transportation. It won’t! That’s why I support him.”

According to V.M. Molotov’s memoirs, Sergo “was a man of feeling and heart… a devoted Stalinist, who defended Stalin in everything.” Yes, he was from the Leninist-Stalinist line of heroes who bequeathed to their descendants an invincible world power. Thanks to his life’s work, Russia continues to withstand the onslaught of a united West. Alexei Tolstoy wrote very accurately of him: “Heroes and heroes never die. Sergo’s memory is preserved in the giants of our heavy industry, the hundreds of thousands of tractors plowing the vast expanses of our Motherland, so that the seeds of the great revolutionary humanism that burned in his heart might sprout. His memory will live on in all the peoples of our Union, because his efforts laid the foundation for our independence and might.”

Source -> https://gazeta-pravda.ru/issue/118-31899-2326-oktyabrya-2026-goda/sovest-bolshevistskoy-partii/