Andrei Bubnov



Andrei Sergeyevich Bubnov (Russian: Андре́й Серге́евич Бу́бнов) (23 March 1884 – 1 August 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader in Russia, and member of the Left Opposition.

Biography
Andrei Bubnov was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk in Vladimir Governorate (now Ivanovo, Ivanovo Oblast, Russia) on 23 March 1884 into a local merchant's family. He was of Russian ethnicity. He studied at the Moscow Agricultural Institute and while a student joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1903. He was a supporter the Bolshevik faction of the party and over the next years would be arrested by the czarist government a total of thirteen times. In 1909 Bubnov was made an agent of the Central Committee in Moscow but the following year he was back in prison. On his release he was sent to organize workers in Nizhny Novgorod. He also contributed to Pravda.

On the outbreak of the First World War Bubnov became involved in the anti-war movement. He was arrested in October, 1916, and exiled to Siberia.

Bubnov returned to Moscow after the February Revolution. He joined the Moscow Soviet and was elected as one of the seven members of the Politburo. As a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee he helped organize the October Revolution.

During the Russian Civil War Bubnov joined the Red Army and fought on the Ukrainian Front. After the war he joined the Moscow Party Committee, and became a member of the Left Opposition.

Andrei Bubnov signed the Declaration of 46 in October 1923, but in January, 1924, he switched to supporting Joseph Stalin and was rewarded by being appointed as Head of Political Control of the Red Army. Elected to Central Committee, he replaced Lunacharsky as People's Commissar for Education.

As Commissar for Education he ended the period of progressive, experimental educational practices and switched the emphasis to training in practical industrial skills.

He was arrested by the NKVD during the Great Purge on 17 October 1937, expelled from the Party Central Committee in November 1937, sentenced to death on 1 August 1938 and shot the same day. Bubnov was posthumously rehabilitated in 1958. His close relatives were still searching for him in various psychiatric hospitals in 1970s.