Pozern, Boris Pavlovich (July 7, 1882, Nizhny Novgorod — February 25, 1939) was a Soviet party and government figure, a native of Nizhny Novgorod, who rose from an underground revolutionary to become one of the leaders of the Leningrad party organization and Prosecutor of Leningrad Region.[1]
Origins and early years
He was born into a doctor's family. He studied at the medical faculty of Moscow University but did not complete the course. In 1902 he joined the RSDLP on the side of the Bolsheviks. In the following years he carried out party work in Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Moscow, and Minsk.[1]
Revolution and the Civil War
In 1917 Pozern headed the Minsk Soviet, and from July of that year he became a member of the Petrograd Committee of the RSDLP(b). From October 1917 he served as commissar of the Northern Front. From March to May 1918 he was a member of the Commissariat for Military Affairs of the Petrograd Labor Commune, and then, until May 1919, he was military commissar of the Petrograd Commune and of the military district. At the same time, in 1918–1919, he sat on the Revolutionary Military Council of the Baltic Fleet and of the 7th Army. From June to July 1919 he was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Western Front, and from August 1919 to January 1920, of the Eastern Front.[1]
Party career in the 1920s and 1930s
In 1921–1922 Pozern headed Glavtextile. In 1922–1923 he held the post of secretary of the North Caucasus Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), and in 1924–1926 he was secretary of the Southwestern Regional Committee of the party. From 1923 to 1930 he was a member of the Central Auditing Commission. From 1926 he was rector of the Communist University and plenipotentiary of the People's Commissariat for Education in Leningrad. In 1929–1933 he worked as secretary and head of a department of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the VKP(b). From 1930 he was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the VKP(b). He was considered one of the closest associates of S. M. Kirov in carrying out purges of Trotskyists and Zinovievites in the Leningrad party organization.[1]
Arrest, sentence, and rehabilitation
In 1937–1938 Pozern served as Prosecutor of Leningrad Region and was a member of the "troika" that signed execution lists during the period of the Yezhov repressions. After the repressions turned against their own perpetrators, he was arrested in 1938. On February 25, 1939, he was sentenced to death and shot. In 1957 he was rehabilitated.[1]
Sources
- 1937god.info — Pozern, Boris Pavlovich (Zalessky, 2000) — 1937 and Other Years