In April 1926, he was appointed to the Secretariat, one of a team of four secretaries led by Stalin, in place of Grigory Yevdokimov, a Zinoviev supporter.

[5] In December 1927, when there were sudden food shortages in the cities because the peasants were holding back their produce in anticipation of rising prices, Shvernik was dispatched to the Urals, as regional party secretary.

[6] He continued to support Stalin loyally through the rapid industrialisation of the soviet economy, which was opposed by almost the entire leadership of the trade unions.

In February 1937, he was a member of the commission that investigated Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov, the two most prominent former oppositionists still living the USSR, and voted that they should be expelled from the Central Committee, arrested, and shot.

Reputedly, Shvernik was so distressed by Stalin's death, in March 1953, that he was the only prominent party leader seen crying at the dictator's funeral.

Appointed Chairman of the Central Control Commission in 1956, he oversaw the 'rehabilitation' of scores of people wrongly convicted during the Stalin years.

Shvernik died on 24 December 1970 at Moscow at the age 82 and his ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.