Ordzhonikidze, Grigory

Ordzhonikidze, Grigory (Konstantinovich)

(born Oct. 24, 1886, Goresha, Russia—died Feb. 18, 1937, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Russian communist leader. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he became chairman of the Caucasian bureau (1921) and helped the Red Army conquer Georgia, forcing its merger with Armenia and Azerbaijan into the Transcaucasian Federal Republic and then into the Soviet Union. He became a member of the Politburo (1930) and commissar for heavy industry (1932), but in the mid-1930s he opposed Joseph Stalin's industrial policy. His sudden death was ascribed to natural causes, but Nikita Khrushchev later charged (1956) that Stalin had driven him to suicide.