(1902–1938), Communist Party activist. Mikhail Mikhailov (Katsenelenbogen), son of a bookkeeper, was born in Vitebsk (Bel., Vitsyebsk) and subsequently moved with his family, first to Pokrov and later to Moscow. Mikhailov attended gymnasium in all three cities but never graduated. He began working as a photographer at the age of 15 while at the same time continuing his self-education. Mikhailov joined the Komsomol (Communist youth organization) in 1918 and the Communist Party in 1919. While in the Red Army from 1919 to 1921, he served as a political instructor and deputy head of the political division of the western front.
After the civil war, Mikhailov was first an instructor in a Moscow district party committee, later chairman of that body (1921–1924), and eventually vice chairman of the local soviet. He was then sent to the town of Kolomna, where he served as secretary of the party committee (1924–1925). From 1925 until 1927, Mikhailov was assigned to do political work in Uzbekistan, as first secretary of the Fergana Provincial Committee and head of the organization department of the Uzbekistan Party Central Committee. In 1928, he was transferred to Moscow to work in the Central Committee apparatus.
In 1930, Mikhailov was sent to study at the agricultural faculty at the University of Red Professors, where he spent one year before being called upon to serve in the Moscow City Party Committee, first as chairman of the organization department and later as secretary of agriculture (1932–1935). In 1935, he was appointed first secretary general of the Kalinin Provincial Committee and in July 1937 as acting first secretary of the Voronezh Provincial Committee. Mikhailov became a candidate and then a full member of the Central Committee in 1935 and was awarded the Order of Lenin the same year. In November 1937, he was arrested, and at the Central Committee plenum in January 1938, he was dismissed from that body. In August 1938, he was convicted and executed. Mikhailov was rehabilitated in 1954 and had his party membership reinstated posthumously in 1956. From 1918 on, Mikhailov had severed contact with his family and did not associate himself in any way with the Jewish community.
Translated from Russian by Chaim Chernikov