Today's Great Russian Pole - Gleb Maksimilianovich Krzhizhanovsky.
Born to an old szlachta family, he was one of Vladimir Lenin's oldest and closest friends.
In the early days, he was the editor of the Rabotnik newspaper, and a cofounder of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.
Later, when sitting in prison with Lenin, he wrote the Russian words to the Warszawianka.
However important his work was in the early revolutionary circles, Krzhizhanovsky is most remembered for something else. That is, being the head of the GOELRO and the first Chairman of the GOSPLAN.
It's hard to identify two organizations more important to Soviet life in the first decades of its existence. GOELRO, was the state plan for the electrification of Russia. That plan is responsible for the building of the mighty hydroelectric dams in Ukraine, and across Russia proper. The industrialization of the Soviet Union was inextricably linked to the GOELRO plan, administered by this Pole.
The GOSPLAN, is of course the Soviet ministry which managed all of planning in our centrally planned economy.
After his death, Krzhizhanovsky was buried along the Kremlin Wall in the necropolis along with other heroes of Russian history.
