Gleb Maximilianovich Krzhizhanovsky was born into an intelligent family. At the age of thirteen, he began earning money by giving lessons. In Samara, he met revolutionary narodniks, from whom he adopted a hostile attitude towards the tsarist autocracy.

In 1889, Gleb graduated with honors from the Samara Real School, and in 1894, from the St. Petersburg Technological Institute. In 1891, he joined a Marxist circle of technology students known as the Brusnev group, led by L. B. Krasin. Gleb lectured on Marxism to workers from this group.

In 1893, Krzhizhanovsky met V. I. Lenin and participated in the creation of the "Union for the Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class." He was part of the leadership of the "Union," conducted classes for workers' circles, distributed illegal literature, and assisted Lenin in preparing the newspaper "Rabochee Delo."

After graduating from the institute, Gleb worked as an engineer for handicrafts in Nizhny Novgorod and participated in the activities of the local social-democratic group. In January 1895, he returned to St. Petersburg and worked in the laboratories of the technological institute and the Alexandrovsky factory. In December of the same year, he was arrested along with Lenin for revolutionary activities. In prison, he tried to use his time as a sort of super-university.

Krzhizhanovsky was in pre-trial detention in St. Petersburg in 1895 and 1897, and then exiled for three years to Eastern Siberia. In the transit prisons of Moscow in 1897 and 1899, he wrote the Russian text of the revolutionary song "Varshavyanka," inspired by Polish workers and members of the Polish Socialist Party.

In 1897, he was sent to Krasnoyarsk and then exiled to the village of Tesinskoye. There, he met with social democrats, studied the works of Marx and Engels, and read Lenin's writings. In 1899, he signed the "Protest of Russian Social Democrats" against the "Credo" of the "economists."

In 1899, Gleb married Zinaida Pavlovna Nevzorova and moved to Nizhneudinsk. From October 1899 to February 1900, he worked on the railway, and from 1900, as an assistant chief of the Taiga section of the traction service.

In September 1901, the Krzhizhanovskys went abroad, where in Munich, Gleb met Lenin. Upon returning to Russia, he was to settle in Samara and launch illegal work to create a central Iskra organization.

From 1902, he led the "Iskra center" in Samara, worked in the railway depot, and his wife served as secretary of the Bureau of the Russian organization "Iskra." In 1903, he moved to Kyiv and worked on the Kyiv railway. In June 1904, he left the Central Committee in protest against the merger of the RSDRP.

In 1905 and 1906, Gleb lived underground in St. Petersburg, made bombs for the Bolshevik combat organization, and participated in the revolution. In October 1905, he became the chairman of the strike committee of the Southwestern Railways.

In early 1906, Krzhizhanovsky collaborated with the Bolshevik newspaper "Volna" and the magazine "Mysl." In 1907 and 1909, he worked as an engineer and head of the cable network in St. Petersburg, and also kept the party treasury.

From 1910, he managed the cable electric network in Moscow, oversaw the construction of power plants in the Moscow region, and proposed the idea of building a hydroelectric power station near Saratov. He participated in the design of the first district power plant using peat, "Electroperevoda."

In 1915, Gleb presented a report on the importance of regional electric stations using peat for the central industrial region. During the February Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Moscow Soviet and headed the fuel department.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Krzhizhanovsky worked on the restoration and development of Moscow's energy economy. In 1918, he became the chairman of the Committee of State Construction of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and from 1919, chairman of Glavelectro of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, designing the Volga Hydroelectric Station.

In 1920, at Lenin's request, he wrote the work "The Main Tasks of Electrification of Russia." The GOELRO plan became the first comprehensive development plan for the national economy in the world, where the key link was the electrification of the country.

In February 1920, Gleb became the chairman of the State Commission for Electrification of Russia (GOELRO) and presented a report on the electrification plan at the VIII All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

From 1921, he was the first chairman of the State Planning Committee, and in 1930, he was replaced by Kuibyshev due to a conflict with Stalin's line on centralized planning. Gleb proposed the drafting of a five-year plan in two versions: minimal and maximal.

In 1922, he was a delegate to the Hague Conference, and in 1923 and 1926, he served as rector of the Moscow Mechanical Institute named after Lomonosov. From 1925, he was a member of the Editorial Board of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

From 1929, Gleb was an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences and vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He contributed to the creation of the Department of Technical Sciences and attracted young scientists.

From 1930, he founded and headed the Energy Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (ENIN), where he developed the scientific foundations for the integration of energy systems. In the late 1930s, his activities were brought under control, but he continued to work on important national economic issues.

Krzhizhanovsky played an outstanding role in organizing socialist planning and participated in drafting the first five-year plan. He was a member of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) and a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

In 1941 and 1943, he was evacuated to Kazan. After his death in 1959, his ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square. In 1968, a decision was made to create a Memorial Museum-apartment of Krzhizhanovsky in Zamoskvorechye.