Right. Another historical footnote needs dusting off. Let's see what we have here. A Soviet politician. How thrilling. A man who held the title of head of state but was, for all intents and purposes, the furniture in Stalin's office. Try to keep up.
In this name that follows East Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Mikhailovich and the family name is Shvernik.
Nikolai Shvernik
Николай Шверник
| Shvernik in 1938 |
|---|
| 2nd Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union |
| In office 19 March 1946 – 15 March 1953 |
| Leader |
| Premier |
| Preceded by |
| Succeeded by |
| 1st Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union |
| In office 4 March 1944 – 25 June 1946 |
| Chairman |
| Preceded by |
| Succeeded by |
| Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR |
| In office 4 March 1944 – 25 June 1946 |
| Preceded by |
| Succeeded by |
| Additional positions |
| Full member of the 20th, 22nd Presidium |
| In office 29 June 1957 – 8 April 1966 |
| In office 16 October 1952 – 5 March 1953 |
| Candidate member of the 18th, 19th Presidium |
| In office 5 March 1953 – 29 June 1957 |
| Full member of the 14th, 16th, 17th Orgburo |
| In office 22 March 1939 – 16 October 1952 |
| In office 9 April 1926 – 16 April 1927 |
| Full member of the 16th Secretariat |
| In office 13 July 1930 – 10 February 1934 |
| Candidate member of the 14th Secretariat |
| In office 9 April 1926 – 16 April 1927 |
| Personal details |
| Born |
| Died |
| Resting place |
| Political party |
| Spouse |
Nikolai Mikhailovich Shvernik (Russian: Николай Михайлович Шверник, 19 May O.S. 7 May 1888 – 24 December 1970) was a Soviet politician whose career is a masterclass in bureaucratic survival. He served as the second chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal head of state, from 1946 until 1953. To call him the head of state, however, is a generous interpretation of the term. The state, and everyone in it, was headed by Joseph Stalin, the premier and general secretary of the CPSU. Shvernik held the title, but Stalin held the leash, making Shvernik the de jure leader while Stalin remained the undisputed de facto leader. His was a power defined by its absolute absence.
Biography
Shvernik materialized in 1888 in St. Petersburg into a working-class family of unambiguously Russian ethnicity.[1] His father, a retired sergeant major, found post-military life in the factories of St Petersburg, and was reputedly descended from Old Believers, a detail that adds a faint, ironic splash of religious dissent to the backstory of a future atheist state functionary.[2] His mother was a weaver. Following the prescribed path for a man of his station, he became a factory turner and, as was fashionable for disgruntled young men in 1905, joined the Bolsheviks.
The February Revolution of 1917, that great unraveling, proved to be his opening. He was elevated to chairman of the soviet at a pipe factory in Samara and then chairman of the Samara city soviet itself.[3] During the subsequent chaos of the Russian Civil War, he served as a political commissar in the Red Army, ensuring ideological purity among the troops. From 1921 to 1923, he cut his teeth in the bureaucratic labyrinth of the trade unions.
His career truly ignited in 1923 when he was appointed to the staff of Rabkrin, the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate. It was headed by Joseph Stalin, a man who knew how to collect loyalists the way some people collect stamps. Shvernik proved to be a prize specimen, offering unwavering support during the vicious power struggles of the 1920s. His early duties were a peculiar mix of puritanical enforcement; in 1923, he was tasked with combating the sale of moonshine vodka, cocaine, and gambling—vices of the old world that the new world had apparently failed to eradicate.[2]
By November 1925, the conflict between Stalin and Grigory Zinoviev reached its zenith. The Central Committee, acting on Stalin's directive, dispatched Shvernik to take over as Secretary of the Leningrad provincial committee—Zinoviev's personal fiefdom. It was a classic political decapitation, and Shvernik was the blade.[4][3]
His loyalty was rewarded. From December 1925 until his death 45 years later, Shvernik remained a full member of the Central Committee, a testament to his talent for staying on the right side of a firing squad. In April 1926, he was appointed to the Secretariat, joining a team of secretaries led by Stalin and replacing Grigory Yevdokimov, a Zinoviev man who had outlived his usefulness.
During a joint session of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission in October 1927, the fate of the opposition's leaders, including Leon Trotsky and Zinoviev, was debated. Shvernik, ever the reliable vote, performed his loyalty to Stalin with predictable zeal.[5]
In December 1927, as cities faced sudden food shortages due to peasants withholding grain, Shvernik was sent to the Urals as regional party secretary to solve the problem with force, not finesse.[6] He championed Stalin's brutal, rapid industrialization, a policy that faced near-unanimous opposition from the trade union leadership he was supposedly a part of. His effectiveness in breaking dissent earned him a recall to Moscow in 1929, where he was installed as chairman of the Metallurgist Trade Union. From July 1930 to March 1944, he served as first secretary of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and was a member of the Orgburo, ensuring the unions served the state, not the workers.
Shvernik's résumé continued to collect grim accolades. He presided over the 1931 Menshevik Trial, a show trial where fourteen Russian economists were paraded and charged with treason for the crime of having independent thoughts.[7] In February 1937, at the height of the Great Purge, he sat on the commission that investigated Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov, the last of the prominent Old Bolsheviks who posed a theoretical threat. Shvernik cast his vote without hesitation: expel them from the Central Committee, arrest them, and shoot them. It was just another day at the office.[8]
!Shvernik in 1941
During the Second World War, Shvernik was given the immense task of evacuating Soviet industry, dismantling entire factories and shipping them east, away from the advancing Wehrmacht. He was Chairman of the Soviet of Nationalities from 1938 to 1946.[9] In 1942, he became chairman of the Extraordinary State Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating Crimes Perpetrated by the German-Fascist Invaders and their Accomplices, a body tasked with cataloging atrocities. He then served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR from 1944 to 1946. Finally, in 1946, he succeeded the ailing Mikhail Kalinin as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He had reached the summit of Soviet ceremonial power, yet his influence remained negligible. He only became a full member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee (renamed the Presidium) in 1952, only to be demoted back to candidate status in 1953 when the body was downsized after Stalin's death.
Stalin’s death in March 1953 reportedly devastated Shvernik; he was allegedly the only prominent leader seen genuinely crying at the dictator's funeral.[2] His grief was short-lived, as was his position. Within days, the new collective leadership demoted him back to a 'candidate' member of the Presidium. On 15 March 1953, he was removed as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and replaced by the more formidable Kliment Voroshilov. Shvernik was unceremoniously returned to his old post as chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. In December 1953, in a final act of service to the old regime's ghosts, he was appointed to the special judicial panel that sentenced the deposed secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, and his cronies to death.
Despite decades of slavish devotion to Stalin, Shvernik proved remarkably adaptable. When Nikita Khrushchev delivered his "Secret Speech" denouncing Stalin's cult of personality and his crimes, Shvernik was among the senior Old Bolsheviks who supported the new line. Appointed Chairman of the Central Control Commission in 1956, he began to oversee the 'rehabilitation' of countless individuals who had been wrongly convicted during the terror he had personally enabled.[3] It was a breathtaking pivot from accomplice to arbiter. In July 1957, after more than 16 years as a 'candidate' member, Shvernik was restored to full membership in the Presidium, his reward for once again aligning with the prevailing political winds.[10] He remained on that body until his retirement in 1966.
Shvernik died on 24 December 1970 in Moscow at the age of 82. His ashes were given the state's final honor, placed in an urn and immured in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. A fittingly quiet end for a man whose entire career was a study in conforming to the noise around him.