Nikolay Shvernik

Nikolay Mikhailovich Shvernik (Russian: Никола́й Миха́йлович Шве́рник, 19 May [O.S. 7 May] 1888 – 24 December 1970) was a Russian politician, who was the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (or President of the USSR) from March 19, 1946 until March 15, 1953. Though the titular head of state Shvernik had, in fact, little power because the real authority lay with Joseph Stalin as General Secretary of the Communist Party.

Biography

Shvernik was born in St. Petersburg.

Shvernik joined the Bolsheviks in 1905. In 1924 he became a People's Commissar in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and became a full member of the Central Committee of the party in 1925. In 1927 he was demoted and sent to the Urals to head the local party organization. Stalin found him a loyal supporter of his policy of rapid industrialisation and moved him back to Moscow in 1929 making him chairman of the Metallurgist Trade Union. He resumed his rise in the party becoming a member of the Orgburo and the party Secretariat. He also served as first secretary of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions from July 1930 to March 1944. As such, Shvernik presided over the 1931 Menshevik Trial, in which fourteen Russian economists came up for trial on charges of treason.