Grigory Moiseevich Kramarov (18871970) was a Russian

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

 revolutionary and Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

. He was an early promoter of the idea of space flight in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, actively advancing the concept from the 1920s.

Biography

Involved in the 1905 revolution in St. Petersburg, Kramarov was arrested and eventually fled Russia, living for a time in San Francisco. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1907. Involved in the 1917 October Revolution, he was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee

All-Russian Central Executive Committee

All-Russian Central Executive Committee , was the highest legislative, administrative, and revising body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Although the All-Russian Congress of Soviets had supreme authority, in periods between its sessions its powers were passed to VTsIK...

 (VTsIK) and took part in the civil war. Afterwards, he worked for the Comintern at the International Leninists School, as a journalist.

Kramarov was strongly involved in the promotion of rocketry and space travel in the Soviet Union, and was a founder and the chairman of the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel

Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel

The Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel was founded in Moscow in May 1924. It was a spin off of a military science society at the Zhukovsky Airforce Academy, and was chaired by Grigory Kramarov. Its 200 charter members included important Soviet space-exploration and rocketry experts such...

 in 1924. In later years, he wrote two books on the early history of space exploration in Russia, "The World's First Society of Interplanetary Flight" and "The Dawn of Cosmonautics" (1965).

Kramarov died in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 in 1970 and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery

Novodevichy Cemetery

Novodevichy Cemetery is the most famous cemetery in Moscow, Russia. It is next to the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent, which is the city's third most popular tourist site. It should not be confused with the Novodevichy Cemetery in Saint Petersburg....

.