whose behavior at the trial had made him suspect in the eyes of rank and file Bolsheviks. Together, they took over Pravda and ousted its previous editors, Vyacheslav Molotov and Alexander Shlyapnikov. Once in control, they advocated conditional support of the newly formed liberal Russian Provisional Government "insofar as it struggles against reaction or counter-revolution". Kamenev, Stalin and Muranov also suggested that Bolsheviks should unite with the internationalist wing of the rival Menshevik faction of the RSDLP. These positions were adopted by the All-Russian Conference of the Bolshevik Party on 28 March-4 April 1917. When Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev returned to Russia on 3 April, they opposed the Kamenev-Stalin-Muranov line and called for a socialist revolution and a complete break with the Mensheviks instead. Once Lenin emerged victorious at the next All-Russian Bolshevik conference in late April 1917, Muranov was sent back to Kharkov to run the local Bolshevik newspaper, Proletarian. At the 6th Bolshevik Party Congress in late July and early August 1917, Muranov was elected to the party's Central Committee and became a member of its Secretariat. On 5 August, the Central Committee elected Muranov to its permanent bureau (uzkij sostav). Political life Muranov participated in the Bolshevik seizure of power during the October Revolution of 1917 and was elected to the Bolshevik-dominated Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at the Second Congress of Soviets. On 27 October, he became a member of the joint Bolshevik-Left Socialist-Revolutionary commission charged with preparing the Second Congress of Peasant Soviets in circumvention of the existing Central Executive Committee of Peasant Soviets. Muranov was a Bolshevik candidate in the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election, being fielded in the Arkhangelsk constituency. As a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, he supported Lenin during the intra-party debate over the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in early 1918. Muranov was not re-elected to the Central Committee at the 7th Bolshevik Party Congress in March 1918, but returned to the body after the 8th Congress in March 1919. He remained a member of the Central Committee until 1923. Between March 1919 and April 1920, he was a candidate member of the Central Committee's Orgburo. During the intra-party struggles of the 1920s, Muranov was an ally of Joseph Stalin. At the 11th Party Congress in 1922 he was elected to the Central Control Commission, a member of which he remained until 1934. In 1923-1934 he was also a