He was executed as a traitor in 1938, following a purge of the Soviet film industry, and much information about him was expunged from the public record as a consequence.

At the age of 12, Boris Shumyatsky worked on the railways in Chita, where he joined the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1903.

[2] He was arrested in January 1906, as the revolt was suppressed, but escaped and worked underground in Verkhneudinsk, Chita, and in Vladivostok, where he took part in an armed uprising in 1907.

[3] He returned to Russia by 1913, but was arrested and deported to Turukhansk, where Joseph Stalin was also exiled,[4] and was there at the start of World War I, during which he was drafted into the Russian army, and organised a secret Bolshevik group within the Krasnoyarsk garrison.

When Soyuzkino was dissolved and replaced by GUKF on 11 February 1933, he remained in charge and even with expanded powers over all matters of production, import/export, distribution and exhibition.

By contrast, Jay Leyda, an American student who worked with Sergei Eisenstein, claimed that on the day Shumyatsky was eventually sacked "all of Moscow's film makers gave parties" to celebrate.

Shumyatsky had a role in the suppression of Eisenstein's unfinished film Bezhin Meadow in 1937, though in the end it was Stalin's decision to ban it.

[7] He was, if anything, even more hostile to the innovative director, Lev Kuleshov, whom he accused of not understanding the importance of a strong story line in films.

[8] He claimed that this and other important lessons for film directors could be learnt by studying the works of Stalin, because "If only we were to collect all the theoretical riches of Joseph Vissarionovich's remarks on cinema, what a critical weapon we would have.

Shumyatsky, who was teetotal and was repelled by the smell of alcohol, took only a small sip, upon which Stalin demanded to know why a subordinate would not drink to his health.

Shumyatsky married Liya Isaevna Pandra (1889-1957), who took her husband's surname, a student of a paramedic school, the daughter of a wealthy merchant from the Siberian city of Kansk.

[12] Nora Shumyatskaya (1909-1985) married Lazar Shapiro, (1903-1943), the Chairman of the Fire Brigade Union, who was arrested in September 1937, released in 1940.