From Lenin to Gorbachev: Encyclopedia of biographies. The most closed people. From Lenin to Gorbachev: Encyclopedia of biographies Sokolnikov g i short biography
SOKOLNIKOV (DIAMOND) Grigory Yakovlevich (Girsh Yankelevich)
(08/03/1888 - 05/21/1939). Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) 10 (23).10.1917 Candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) from 02.06.1924 to 18.12.1925 Member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) - RCP (b) - All-Union Communist Party ( b) in 1917 - 1919, 1922 - 1930. Candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1930 - 1936. Party member since 1905
Born in the city of Romny, Poltava province, into the family of a doctor. Jew. He graduated from high school in Moscow. Studied at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University (did not graduate). Higher education received in 1914 from the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris. Doctor of Political Economy. A friend of N.I. Bukharin from his gymnasium years. Participant in the revolution of 1905 - 1907. He was a member of the Sokolniki district committee of the RSDLP of Moscow. In 1907 he was arrested, in February 1909 he was exiled to the Yenisei province. In 1909 he escaped from exile and lived in exile in France and Switzerland. During the First World War, he collaborated with the Menshevik-liquidation newspaper Nashe Slovo. Returned to Petrograd in a sealed carriage from Switzerland through Germany during its war with Russia, with the consent of the German government in April 1917, together with V.I. Lenin. Worked in Moscow, Petrograd: member of the MK RSDLP (b) and the Moscow regional bureau of the party, was on the editorial board of the Bolshevik newspapers Pravda, Rabochiy i Soldier, Proletary, Rabochiy, Rabochiy Put. Member of the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet, Central Executive Committee of the Soviets. Participant of the October armed uprising in Petrograd. In October 1917 he led the nationalization of banks. In December 1917, a member of the Soviet delegation at negotiations with Germany, in 1918 he replaced L. D. Trotsky in this post, signed Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Then a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council, in the editorial office of the newspaper Pravda, in military-political work in the Red Army, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 2nd and 9th armies. Since December 1918, member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front. At the VIII Congress of the RCP(b) (1919) he made a report on the policy of the Central Committee in military matters. The report was based on L. D. Trotsky’s nineteen theses on the principles of forming a regular Red Army, which he himself was going to speak at the congress, but was unable to arrive in Moscow due to the threatening situation at the front. For the first time, theses were voiced about attracting military specialists from the old army to command positions, increasing the role of military commissars and communist cells in units and on ships. Instead of partisanship, it was proposed to create an army on a regular, permanent basis. In 1919 - 1920 commanded the 8th Army of the Southern Front. He demanded the cancellation of the directive of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) dated January 24, 1919, single-handedly signed by Ya. M. Sverdlov, on the extermination of rich Cossacks without exception. From August 1920, he was a member of the Turkestan Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), and was the chairman of the Turkestan Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR. At the same time, commander of the troops of the Turkestan Front. Since November 1921, in financial work: member of the board, deputy people's commissar (1922), people's commissar of finance of the RSFSR (1922 - 1923), people's commissar of finance of the USSR (1923 - 1926). In 1922 he participated in the Hague Conference. In 1923, he carried out a monetary reform (“Sokolnikov’s reform”), stabilized the ruble, introduced and strengthened a red currency based on gold, and introduced a new type of banknotes into circulation. One ruble of the 1923 model was equal to one million rubles of banknotes withdrawn from circulation or one hundred rubles of the 1922 model. According to N.I. Bukharin, the true creator financial reform was cadet economist N.N. Kutler, who died in 1924. In 1925 - 1926 member of the “new opposition” and the Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc. He was not stable in political matters. In the discussion before the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b) he sided with the platform of L. D. Trotsky, in the discussion in 1923 he moved away from him and in matters of economic policy he sharply opposed the views of the opposition. On January 16, 1926, he was removed from the post of People's Commissar of Finance and appointed, with demotion, as Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR. In June 1926, on the initiative of the opposition, he was sent to the V Congress of the French Communist Party. Having learned about this, J.V. Stalin, who was vacationing in Sochi on June 15, 1926, sent a codegram to V.M. Molotov and N.I. Bukharin: “Sokolnikov should be immediately recalled from France, and the Central Committee of France should be informed that Sokolnikov has no instructions on French affairs, neither from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, nor from the ECCI” (RTSKHIDNI. F. 558. Op. 1. D. 3340). In 1927, for participation in the “united left opposition”, he was expelled from the party, then reinstated. In 1928 - 1929 Chairman of the Board of the USSR Oil Syndicate. In 1928 he came out in support of the “right deviation”. Since 1929, plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Great Britain, since March 1933, member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. In May 1933 - June 1934, Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR. Since May 1935, First Deputy People's Commissar of the Forestry Industry of the USSR. He was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. On July 26, 1936, he was arrested, removed from the Central Committee and expelled from the ranks of the CPSU(b). In September 1936, at a confrontation with the Central Committee in the presence of L. M. Kaganovich, he confirmed the existence of a “parallel” Trotskyist center, which gave instructions for sabotage, sabotage, terror against members of the government, and organizing assassination attempts on J. V. Stalin. G. Ya. Sokolnikov admitted that he personally talked about this with N. I. Bukharin, and he warned him that he needed to act as soon as possible. He described the situation, named the dates, where and in whose presence these negotiations took place. N.I. Bukharin exclaimed: “Grisha! Perhaps you have lost your mind and are not responsible for your words?!” “No,” G. Ya. Sokolnikov calmly answered, “I am responsible for them, and you will soon answer for yours...” On January 30, 1937, in the case of the “parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist center” he was sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR to 10 years in prison . 05/21/1939 killed in the Verkhneuralsk political detention center (Tobolsk, Tyumen region) by cellmates. 06/12/1988 rehabilitated by the plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR, the CPC under the CPSU Central Committee was reinstated in the party.
Plan
Introduction
1 Biography
1.1 Family and education
1.2 Revolutionary
1.3 Nationalization of banks and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
1.4 Member civil war
1.5 People's Commissar of Finance
1.6 Continued civil service
1.7 Arrest and trial
1.8 Prison. Murder.
2 Family
3 Memory of Sokolnikov
4 Proceedings
Bibliography
Introduction
Grigory Yakovlevich (Girsh Yankelevich) Sokolnikov ( real name Diamond; August 3 (August 15), 1888, Romny, Poltava province - May 21, 1939, Verkhneuralsk?) - Soviet statesman. Member of the USSR Central Executive Committee of the 1st, 2nd, and 7th convocations. Member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) (1917-1919 and 1922-1930), candidate member of the Central Committee (1930-1936). Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) (October 1917), candidate member of the Politburo (1924-1925).
1. Biography
1.1. Family and education
Born into a Jewish family of a doctor and pharmacy owner, Yankel Brilliant. Mother - Fanya Rosenthal, daughter of a merchant of the first guild. Brothers Vladimir (died in exile) and Mikhail (died in Kolyma).
Graduated from the 5th Moscow classical gymnasium. He studied at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, which he did not graduate due to his revolutionary activities. Graduated Faculty of Law and a doctorate course in economics at the Sorbonne (1914). He spoke six languages.
1.2. Revolutionary
In 1905 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) - RSDLP (b). He took part in the revolutionary events of 1905-1907, including the uprising in Moscow in December 1905. He was a party propagandist in the City district, then was a member of the Sokolniki district committee of the RSDLP and the Military Technical Bureau of the Moscow party committee.
In the fall of 1907 he was arrested, in February 1909 he was sentenced to exile to eternal settlement, which he served in the village of Rybnoye, Yenisei province. However, just six weeks after arriving in this village, he fled from exile, and soon went abroad. He settled in France, combined his studies at the university with journalistic activities (participation in the publication of the newspaper “For the Party” and management of the workers’ club “Proletary”.
He had a negative attitude towards the First World War. He lived in Switzerland, where he organized a bureau of foreign groups of Bolshevik party members, and worked in the Swiss Social Democratic Party. Consistently adhered to “internationalist” positions close to the point of view of V.I. Lenin, with whom he returned to Russia after February Revolution in a “sealed carriage” (April 1917). Very quickly he became one of the leaders of the Moscow Bolsheviks, from April 1917 - a member of the Moscow committee of the RSDLP (b) and the Bolshevik faction in the executive committee of the Moscow Soviet. He sharply criticized the Provisional Government, the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, considering it possible to unite only with the Social Democratic Internationalists close to the Bolsheviks. Made a project new program Bolshevik party.
At the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b) (July - August 1917) he was elected a member of the party's central committee. He was a member of the executive committee of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets. He was a member of the political bureau of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, created to prepare an armed uprising against the Provisional Government. After the Bolsheviks came to power, he was a member of the new All-Russian Central Executive Committee and editor of the newspaper Pravda.
1.3. Nationalization of banks and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
In November 1917 he was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly from the Tver province.
From November 1917, he led the nationalization of the country's banking system as an assistant commissioner of the State Bank with the rights of a fellow manager, head of the Commissariat of Former Private Banks, and a member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Finance (Narkomfin). Author of the draft decree on the nationalization of banks. In November 1917, he also became part of the delegation that was sent to Brest-Litovsk to negotiate an armistice. After Leon Trotsky refused to lead the delegation in Brest-Litovsk, he replaced him in this post and on March 3, 1918 signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on behalf of the Bolsheviks ( Soviet Russia).
In May-June 1918 - member of the presidium of the Supreme Council of the National Economy, worked for the newspaper Pravda.
In June 1918 he conducted negotiations in Berlin on economic and legal issues related to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.
1.4. Civil War participant
From 1918 he was on the fronts of the Civil War, was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 2nd and 9th armies, the Southern Front. In 1919-1920 - commander of the 8th Army: Sokolnikov, who had no military education and no experience of independent command, was appointed to this post to strengthen the confidence of the personnel in his superiors, after some of the staff of the headquarters in the conditions of the offensive Armed Forces The south of Russia deserted, and some of them went over to the side of the whites. He showed himself to be a good organizer - under his command the army launched a counter-offensive, made a difficult transition from Voronezh to Rostov-on-Don, which ended with the capture of this city. Then, having made a quick roundabout maneuver, she reached Novorossiysk, which meant the final defeat of Denikin’s army. For military services he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
Occupying posts in the Red Army, Sokolnikov had a negative attitude towards the policy of “decossackization” pursued by a number of party and Soviet workers and aimed at destroying the Cossacks. He supported the Red Cossack commander (former military sergeant major) Philip Mironov, whom he took under protection after being sentenced to death on charges of rebelling against Soviet power. A consistent opponent of “partisanship”, a supporter of the construction of the Red Army on a regular basis using military specialists.
In 1920 - commander of the Turkestan Front, chairman of the Turkestan Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars and chairman of the Turkburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. He led the establishment of Soviet power in Turkestan, the fight against the “Basmachi” movement, and the implementation of monetary reform in Turkestan in a short time - the replacement of local depreciated banknotes (Turkbon) with all-Soviet money. During his work in the region, the food appropriation system was abolished (earlier than in the country as a whole), which was replaced by a tax in kind, free trade in bazaars was allowed, and representatives of the Islamic clergy who declared their political loyalty were released from prison. Later, a similar set of measures was implemented on a nationwide scale within the framework of the NEP (New Economic Policy), one of the main proponents of which Sokolnikov was later.
Almost all of 1921 did not participate in active political activity due to a serious illness, he was treated in Germany, where he underwent surgery.
1.5. People's Commissar of Finance
He returned to work in the fall of 1921, when he was appointed a member of the Narkomfin board, and in 1922 he became deputy people's commissar finance and actually headed this department (People's Commissar, Nikolai Krestinsky, was at the same time the plenipotentiary representative of the RSFSR in Germany and was constantly in Berlin). During this period, the country was experiencing a financial crisis; by 1921, the ruble had depreciated 50 thousand times compared to pre-war times, and average prices for goods had increased by more than 97 thousand times. In the fall of 1922, Sokolnikov officially became People's Commissar of Finance of the RSFSR, and after the formation of the People's Commissariat of Finance of the USSR in July 1923, he headed this institution (he held the post of People's Commissar of Finance of the USSR until January 1926).
“... our dear, talented and most valuable Comrade Sokolnikov does not understand anything about the practice of trade. And he will destroy us if he is allowed to go ahead” (V.I. Lenin in a letter to L.B. Kamenev)
In the summer of 1922 he participated in the Hague Conference. In 1923-1924 he led the implementation of monetary reform, a consistent supporter of the creation of a stable currency. In carrying out financial policy he relied on professionals, including specialists from the state apparatus Tsarist Russia and scientists. During his tenure as People's Commissar in the USSR, hard currency was introduced into circulation - the "chervonets", equal to the 10-ruble gold coin of tsarist minting and backed by 25% of its value with gold, other precious metals and foreign currency and 75% - easily marketable goods and short-term liabilities. In the spring of 1924, treasury notes came into circulation. The minting of silver and copper coins began. In 1925, the Soviet chervonets was officially listed on the stock exchanges of a number of countries (including Austria, Turkey, Italy, China, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), and transactions with it were carried out in Great Britain, Germany, Holland, Poland, the USA and many other countries.
During Sokolnikov’s tenure as People’s Commissar of Finance, a system of banking institutions headed by the State Bank was created, state credit operations began (short-term and long-term loans), natural taxation was eliminated and a system of cash taxes and incomes was created, State Insurance and state labor savings banks were created, State and local budgets were differentiated, norms of Soviet budget law were developed, financial discipline and reporting were introduced. Thus, a normal financial system was created in the USSR.
A supporter of strict financial policy, an opponent of unrealistic economic plans and accelerated industrial development with the help of inflationary mechanisms, which could lead to the collapse of the national currency. Adherent to the “slow, gradual and careful implementation of socialism in practice.” Stated that
If we have on the wall near the Iverskaya Chapel: “Religion is the opium of the people,” then I would suggest hanging a sign near the Supreme Economic Council: “Emission is the opium of the national economy.”
He considered the Soviet economy as part of the world economy. Believed that
The economic and financial rise of Soviet Russia is possible in a short time only if it is able to economically join the world market and rely on the broad base of the relatively primitive commodity economy in Russia.
In June 1924 - December 1925 - candidate member of the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1925-1926, he participated in the activities of the “new opposition” in the party, whose leaders were Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, advocated the collective leadership of the party, and expressed doubts about the need to retain the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which was held by Joseph Stalin.
SOKOLNIKOV Grigory Yakovlevich (pseudonym; real surname Brilliant; 1888, Romny, Poltava province, - 1939, ?), Soviet statesman and party leader.
Son of a doctor. As a child, he moved to Moscow, where he studied at a classical gymnasium (“as a Jew, he suffered persecution from the gymnasium authorities,” Sokolnikov noted in his autobiography). Since 1903 - a participant in revolutionary circles, since 1905 - a member of the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP, led the Social Democratic movement of students. In 1905–1907 in illegal work, he was an agitator, propagandist, party organizer, and member of the military-technical bureau of the Moscow Bolshevik Committee. Participated in the Moscow armed uprising (December 1905). In the fall of 1907, he was arrested along with the Sokolniki District Committee of Social Democrats and, by a court decision, in February 1909 he was exiled to permanent settlement in the Yenisei province. Soon he escaped from exile.
Since the autumn of 1909, Sokolnikov lived in Paris, headed the Proletary workers' club, graduated from the Sorbonne Faculty of Law and a doctorate course in economic sciences (he spoke six languages). From the first days of the First World War, Sokolnikov took an internationalist position and worked in the Swiss Bureau of Foreign Groups of Bolshevik Party Members, which he organized, as well as in the Swiss Social Democratic Party. After the February Revolution of 1917, in the so-called sealed carriage (together with V. Lenin, G. Zinoviev, etc.) he returned to Russia through Germany. Since April 1917 - member of the Moscow Bolshevik Committee. In August, at the 6th Congress of the RSDLP(b), he was elected a member of the editorial board of the central body of the party (together with I. Stalin) and a member of the Central Committee (1917–19, 1922–30; candidate member of the Central Committee 1930–36). In October 1917, he was elected by the Central Committee to the Political Bureau for the leadership of the armed uprising.
After October revolution led the nationalization and reorganization of banks. In 1918 - Chairman of the Soviet peace delegation, signed the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty (in June 1918, negotiated in Berlin on the economic and legal aspects of the agreement). In 1918–20, during the Civil War, he was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 2nd, 9th, 13th and 8th armies, political commissar of the Southern Front, commander of the 8th Army (he went with it from Voronezh to Novorossiysk) . In March 1919, he made a report on issues of military development at the 8th Congress of the RCP(b), defending the need for a transition from “partisanship” to a regular army. At the same time, Sokolnikov spoke out in defense of the commander of the special Cossack corps F. Mironov, who was sentenced to death for unauthorized performance on the Southern Front (Lenin called Mironov “Sokolnikov’s man”), and was an opponent of the policy of so-called decossackization pursued by the Soviet authorities. In August 1920, Sokolnikov was appointed chairman of the Turkestan Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, commander of the Turkestan Front. He led the organization of Soviet power in the former Bukhara Emirate and other areas Central Asia. In 1921 he was Deputy People's Commissar of Finance (since the autumn of that year he actually headed the People's Commissariat), and in 1922–26. - People's Commissar of Finance. In the summer of 1922 he participated in the Hague Conference. In 1923–24 Sokolnikov carried out a monetary reform that contributed to the strengthening of the ruble (introduced a gold currency - “chervonets”). From June 1924 to December 1925 he was a candidate member of the Politburo of the RCP(b).
In 1925–26 Sokolnikov supported the so-called new opposition (see L. Kamenev, G. Zinoviev), but at the 14th Congress of the RCP (b) in 1925 he insisted on the need to ensure the rise of agriculture as the basis for industrial development. He soon left the opposition and from the spring of 1926 worked as deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee Soviet Union. Since 1928 - Chairman of the Oil Syndicate. In 1929–32 was Plenipotentiary Representative (Ambassador) of the Soviet Union in England, 1932–35. - Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, since 1935 - First Deputy People's Commissar of the Forestry Industry of the USSR.
In July 1936, Sokolnikov was arrested and at the fabricated show trial of the “Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center” (January 1937), where, among other crimes, he was accused of espionage for England, Germany and Japan, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. On May 19, 1939, Sokolnikov and K. Radek (obviously on the orders of their superiors) were beaten to death by criminals. In 1988, Sokolnikov was rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of the USSR. Sokolnikov is the author of a number of works on economic and financial issues, as well as a book of memoirs, “The Peace of Brest-Litovsk” (1920).
Sokolnikov G. Ya.
(Brilliant, 1888-1939; autobiography). - Born on August 15, 1888 in the district town of Poltava province. Romnakh, where my father served as a doctor on the Li-bavo-Romenskaya railway. d. Learned to read early (5 years old). After his family moved to Moscow, he entered the fifth classical Moscow gymnasium, which retained the teaching of Latin and Greek languages. As a Jew, he suffered persecution from the gymnasium authorities. “Classical” studies pushed me into self-education circles that multiplied like mushrooms; self-education circles spontaneously grew into political circles. In political circles of youth, in an environment of rapidly growing (1903-05) revolutionary movement , there was a stratification and selection of those who took the side of the proletariat. After becoming acquainted with populist and Marxist literature, he joined the Moscow Marxist circles (he was especially close to the circle of M. Luntz, Narkirier, and others), where the main legal Marxist books were carefully studied and illegal periodicals and pamphlets were regularly read. The “transport” of foreign literature delivered to the apartment for storage introduced the theoretical and tactical disagreements discussed in foreign Social-Democrats. print. At underground youth parties he argued with the Social Revolutionaries and Tolstoyans (S. Durylin, Gusev). Among the first acquaintances of the “underground workers” was Loginov (Anton), through whom a connection was established with Moscow. Bolshevik committee. In 1905 he joined the Moscow Bolshevik organization and led the Social-Democrats. movement of students, participated in the December uprising. On matters of organizing student youth, I often met with M. N. Pokrovsky, N. N. Rozhkov, Mitskevich, and Tseytlin. The choice between joining the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks was made largely on the basis of an assessment of the position of both factions on the question of the role of the proletariat in the democratic revolution and participation in the provisional government. In the spring of 1906, he joined the propaganda board of the City District, working mainly among printers, then worked in the Sokolnichesky District, first as a propagandist among weavers, then as a member of the district committee - an organizer, agitator, propagandist. At the same time he worked in the “military technical bureau” at Moscow. to those - the center of the Bolshevik fighting squads. This period includes acquaintances with Victor (Taratuta), Bur (Hesse), Mark (Lyubimov). The connection with Vlas (Likhachev) was especially close. According to military-technical the bureau was associated with “Semyon Semenovich” (Kostitsyn) and “Eros” (P.K. Sternberg). Street rallies, forest crowds, sudden appearances of Bolshevik speakers in workers' barracks, a school for workers' propagandists, proclamations and handicraft leaflets written and printed by workers - all this caused close police attention and triple surveillance. During the massive failures in Moscow in the fall of 1907, the Sokolnichesky district also failed. Having been arrested at a meeting surrounded by police, he spent several days in the Sokolnicheskaya part, then was transferred to Butyrka prison, from where in February 1909 he was sent to a settlement. Before his transfer, he was sent to work alone, swept Dolgorukovskaya Street together with criminals and received the traditional “kopecks” from kind-hearted passers-by. For refusing to take off his hat when passing the prison governor, shortly before being sent to Siberia, he was put in a basement punishment cell, shackled and transferred to the position of a convict. Trial in the fall of 1908 in the judicial chamber on charges of belonging to the Sokolniki district committee of the Social Democratic Party. Bolsheviks (Article 102) ended with a sentence of eternal settlement. A year and a half of being in solitary confinement was a time of systematic reading on economics, history, and philosophy. Reading was usually varied by playing chess with neighbors using the wall-tapping method. Despite the confiscations of chess, which were made from bread, and punishments for knocking, this game flourished. In these years, the solitary regime in the Butyrka prison was relatively decent, the deterioration began at the end of 1908. A prison handwritten journal was published by B. Plyusnin, one of the most active employees of which was N. L. Meshcheryakov, who at that time was awaiting trial with his co-trials - N. Sokolov , Veselov, etc. In the prison bathhouse, amid thick steam, splashing water and the knocking of wooden gangs, heated debates were held about empiriomonism and dialectics. The unsuccessful escape of the maximalist expropriator, who tried to escape from the bathhouse dressed in the dress of an overseer, led, however, to a revision of the charter of bathhouse liberties and to a significant reduction in them.
After four months of wandering around the prison camp and sitting in transit prisons, he was taken to the place of settlement, in the village of Rybnoye on the Angara (Yenisei region). In the Krasnoyarsk transit prison I met with Ordzhonikidze, Erkomashvili, and Shklovsky. On the Angara, polemical abstracts against the Socialist Revolutionaries and organizational meetings of exiles were interspersed with excursions to the taiga and work on supplying bark to a local merchant. Together with Shklovsky, he fled the settlement after a six-week stay in Rybnoye. Through Moscow he reached Mariampol (near the Prussian border) and, with the assistance of Stoklitsky, escaped across the border. Having settled in Paris in the fall of 1909, he headed the Proletary workers' club on Lenin's instructions. At that time, emigrant meetings took place in the Russian library on Avenue de Gobelin, at which Lenin fought against the liquidators and otzovists. I met Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya at the editorial office of the Sots.-Democrat Central Organ, where she usually carefully collected information about what was happening in Russia from visitors who came to the editorial office. Lenin was first seen at a meeting of the Paris Bolshevik group; was his report on two possible paths of agricultural development in Russia. There was a difficult period at the height of the reaction, but Lenin exuded indestructible firmness and cheerfulness. He lived in a tiny apartment on Marie-Rose Street, spent long hours working at the National Library, in the evening in a small, sparkling clean kitchen, and over a more than simple dinner, V.I. talked with comrades who dropped in to see him. In Paris he graduated from the Faculty of Law and a doctorate course in economic sciences. During the split after the plenum of the Central Committee in the spring of 1910, he joined the group of Bolshevik party members [in which Mark (Lyubimov), Leva (Vladimirov), Lozovsky (Dridzo) and others participated]. He took part in the newspaper “For the Party” published by the group. I met a couple of times with Plekhanov, who at that time was grouping around himself the anti-liquidation Mensheviks; the arrogance with which Plekhanov behaved could not, however, hide the fact that he was already losing the ability to navigate Russian affairs. Later in Switzerland he organized the “Swiss Bureau of Foreign Groups of Bolshevik Party Members.” Having taken an internationalist position from the first days of the war, he was active in Swiss social services. party, collaborated in the internationalist newspaper "Our Word" published in Paris, in the editorship of which L. Trotsky participated, gave abstracts on imperialism, prospects socialist revolution etc. in a number of Swiss cities and, supporting the Zimmerwald “left” after Zimmerwald, came closer to the position of the Bolshevik Central Committee.
He left for Russia after the February Revolution with the first group of emigrants, which included Lenin, Zinoviev, Radek, Kharitonov, Inessa Armand, Miringof, Lilina, Usnevich and others. The journey in a “sealed carriage” through Germany was filled with discussions of tactical platforms on an empty stomach - it was decided in principle to refuse the liquid soup that the German Red Cross was going to treat the travelers to. Two delegates from the Central Committee of the German Social-Democratic Party, who tried to get into the carriage to bring greetings to Lenin, had to hastily retreat in view of the ultimatum presented to them - to leave if they did not want to be pushed out in the neck. This ultimatum formulated by Lenin was presented to the delegates without rhetorical softening and had the desired effect. The meeting of the passengers of the “sealed carriage” in Sweden was organized by Ganetsky. Information about the persecution launched against Lenin and the group of Bolsheviks traveling with him forced us to admit the possibility of an attempt by the Provisional Government to arrest the visitors after crossing the Russian border. Just in case (at Lenin’s suggestion) they agreed on how to behave during interrogations, etc.
In Petrograd, he entered into negotiations on joint work with the leaders of the so-called “mezhrayonka” - an organization of united internationalists, with which foreign groups of Bolshevik party members were in contact. This organization, which later merged with the Bolshevik Party, then spoke out against an immediate merger with the Bolsheviks. This circumstance made it impossible to join the “interdistrict”. Having left Petrograd for Moscow (in April 1917), he returned to the Moscow Bolshevik organization, to which he was soon elected a member of the Moscow. Committee and Moscow region the Bureau. He was also a member of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet. At this time, he was close in his work with Bukharin, V.M. Smirnov, Osinsky, Yakovleva, Bubnov, Stukov, Sapronov. While still abroad, he advocated a program for the seizure of power by the Soviets and the launch of a socialist revolution; in accordance with this, he supported Lenin’s April theses against some of the Bolsheviks who at the first moment spoke out against the “theses”. During campaign trips around the Moscow region, he was arrested by officers in Kineshma, but was repulsed and released by soldiers of the reserve unit stationed there. Participated in Moscow. collection
“On the question of revising the party program” was an article that proposed an option for reworking the fundamental part of the old (Social-Democratic) program.
At the VI Congress he was elected to the Central Committee and the editorial board of the Central Organ. Together with I. Stalin, he was a member of the editorial board of newspapers that were published instead of Pravda after July days- “Worker and Soldier”, “Path of Pravda”, “Voice of Pravda” (in these newspapers he wrote a number of editorials and other articles and reviewed the press), and then “Pravda” from the moment of the October Revolution. After the July defeat, Lenin considered a more or less long period of counter-revolutionary violence against the masses likely. He demanded the preparation of illegal press organs, and at one time considered the hopes of preserving Bolshevik legal newspapers illusory. Kornilov's speech changed the situation much faster. Kornilov's defeat showed that active proletarian forces go to fight only under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. The Kornilov days were a kind of preliminary “rehearsal” for the October days. Returning from his Finnish refuge, Lenin led the revolutionary forces on a rapid offensive. S. was a member of the Petrograd Executive Committee. Council, and then a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets. He belonged to the majority of the Central Committee that, together with Lenin, voted for the uprising and carried it out, and was a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, elected during the uprising. After the October Revolution, he was sent to Brest as part of a delegation authorized to negotiate an armistice. Upon returning from Brest, he developed a draft decree on the nationalization of private banks, supervised their nationalization and, together with a group of bankers (Tumanov, Basias, Kogan), carried out the reorganization of the former. private banks and their mergers. He took part in the “capture” of the State Court. bank and its revolutionary reorganization. According to the Bolshevik candidate lists, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly. Participation in the Brest armistice negotiations determined the second trip to Brest in the spring of 1918 (after the breakdown of peace negotiations and the resumption of the German offensive) as the chairman of the peace delegation, which was entrusted to the Central Committee to accept the ultimatum proposals of the German command and sign peace (the delegation included Chicherin, Ioffe, Karakhan). When there were disagreements in the Central Committee on the issue of resuming negotiations and the statement of readiness to sign peace, he supported the position defended by Lenin. It goes without saying that there was no confidence that the peace proposal would be accepted by the German government, and the appearance on the tape of the Hughes apparatus late at night of the first words of the German response agreeing to resume negotiations was largely unexpected for everyone, especially since the delay in the response, ongoing movement German troops and their capture of Pskov created from hour to hour the impression that the peaceful maneuver was unsuccessful. The Soviet delegation, not reaching Pskov due to the destruction of the railway. path, loaded onto handcars, and finally walked the last part of the way to the German lines late in the evening. The command of the forward units, not aware of the resumption of negotiations, was in great perplexity and initially did not know what to do with the delegation that appeared in such a strange and unexpected way. German soldiers justified the offensive by the need to liberate the outlying peoples from Russian oppression. The departure of the delegation from Pskov to Brest was accompanied by a hostile demonstration of the city crowd, among which there was a provocative rumor that, under the guise of a trip of a peaceful delegation, members were fleeing Soviet government, which was overthrown in Russia. The German government stated that the offensive would continue until the treaty was signed. The peace delegation, however, did not have instructions to conduct long-term negotiations: due to the complete exposure of the front, the massive withdrawal of units of the old army hundreds of miles to the rear and the weakness of the organized red detachments, resistance to the German ultimatum was impossible. Its conditions were further worsened by the inclusion of new Turkish demands presented at the very last moment. When signing the peace, as the chairman of the Soviet delegation (the chairman of the German delegation was von Rosenberg, later the Minister of Foreign Affairs), he made a speech in which, to the great indignation of those present, led by General. Hoffman German generals eastern front, a sharp characterization of the German ultimatum was given and the confidence was expressed that the triumph of imperialism over the Soviet country was only temporary and transitory.
Upon returning from Brest, together with the Central Committee (in the spring of 1918), he moved to Moscow and returned to work in the editorial office of the central organ of Pravda, which had been moved to Moscow. In the brochure "On the Question of National Banks" he assessed the significance of the nationalization of banks and the future role of credit institutions. At the first All-Russian At the Congress of Economic Councils in the summer of 1918, he made a report on the fundamentals of financial policy during the transition period, objecting to the policy of abolishing money. He defended the same principles in articles published then in the National Economy. Soon (in June) he was included in a commission sent to Berlin, which was to draw up economic and legal agreements additional to the peace treaty. The time of these negotiations included Krasin’s trip to Ludendorff’s headquarters and negotiations with him on stopping the movement of German troops to Baku. Ludendorff's firmly planned plan for cutting off the Caucasus and Turkestan was thwarted by the landing of American troops on the French coast, which created a new military situation and excluded the possibility of implementing the military plans of the extreme right wing of the German imperialists in Russia. In Berlin, I read a number of reports at meetings of independent socialists and in Spartacist circles. Together with Bukharin he visited Kautsky, conversations with whom were, however, immediately interrupted due to obvious futility. After the murder of Mirbach, there was a break in the negotiations, and the commission went back. In a report to Lenin upon his return to Moscow, he informed him about the growth of the revolutionary movement in Germany and the rapidly progressing process of disintegration of the army and soldier riots. Meanwhile, the White Guard uprising in the Volga region, raised by the Socialist Revolutionary Committee of the Constituent Assembly and supported by the Czech-Slovak legions, began to emerge as a serious threat - the epic of civil war was approaching. As a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 2nd Army of the Eastern Front, he went to Vyatka (together with S. Gusev); to the post of commander of the 2nd Army, members of the Revolutionary Military Council nominated Colonel Shorin of the old army, who was one of the first “military experts” among the army commanders. The 2nd Army was supposed to liquidate the uprising at the Izhevsk and Botkin factories and prevent the rebels from uniting with the troops of the founders. There were kulak uprisings around Vyatka; food detachments sent from Moscow partially joined the rebels. The 2nd Army suffered a number of setbacks in the first clashes. This collection of individual detachments did not initially represent one organized whole. The detachments consisted of partisans - workers, sailors, volunteer soldiers who went through the school of imperialist war and were transferred from the German front. Requisitions of food, horses, hay, and premises caused acute friction with the peasantry. The mobilization of local peasants into the ranks of the Red Army was achieved with enormous difficulties: those mobilized deserted after receiving uniforms, or surrendered to the enemy in battle at the first skirmishes; There were also direct betrayals of large and small units. While the main forces of the reorganized second army launched an offensive on Izhevsk, a special division, in the formation of which he took a direct part, was entrusted with the movement to the Votkinsk plant. The formation of the division was interspersed with battles, which in the wooded Kama foothills boiled down to a fierce struggle for Tatar villages, subjected to day and night raids. The front line could only conditionally be called a line: individual units had difficulty maintaining contact with each other, and often in one area the red companies were in the rear of the whites, while in another area the whites found themselves in the rear of the reds. Sometimes the “front” moved forty miles forward in a day, and seventy miles back in a night. The regular part of the division was the Latvian regiment under the command of Colonel Tauman, who preferred to act cautiously, slowly and surely; the shock roles were performed by a partisan sailor detachment, which was hardly kept under discipline by its commissar, Baryshnikov (later the military commissar of the Glazov district), who stood out for his personal boundless courage; The mobilized battalions were commanded by military commissar Malygin, who emerged from local peasants, and “specialists” - young officers of the old army, including Staff Captain Ginet, who was hacked to death by the whites when, during the flight of his soldiers, he tried to detain the enemy in a thin advanced chain. The Whites, relying on arms factories, had more weapons and ammunition; in dangerous moments they carried out a wholesale mobilization of all workers and drove them into battle, placing punitive companies in the second line that fired at the retreating ones.
After two months of struggle, during which the leadership of the uprising at the factories increasingly passed from the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks to the monarchist bureaucrats and officers, who were especially abundant in Izhevsk, the whites retreated beyond the Kama (later the white Izhevsk units joined Kolchak’s army). A turning point in peasant sentiments in the Volga region and the defeat of the army of the Uchr Committee. collection near Kazan essentially predetermined the failure of the Izhevsk-Votkinsk uprising.
From the 2nd Army he was transferred after the liquidation of the Izhevsk uprising to the southern front and, as a member of the front's Revolutionary Council, was sent to the 9th Army, where the commander was Knyagnitsky (an engineer, an old Bolshevik) and members of the Revolutionary Council were Dashkevich and Vladimir Baryshnikov (Moscow party worker, later captured by General Mamontov and executed by the Whites after much torture). The basis of the 9th Army were the partisan volunteer divisions of Kikvidze and Sivers and the mounted partisan Cossack division of Mironov. Kikvidze was one of the best partisan military organizers; its units consisted of a cadre of old soldiers who, together with Kikvidze, fought in battles with the Germans, Petliurists and Cossacks long haul from the Austrian border to the Volga and during this long march acquired reliable reinforcements from revolutionary volunteer workers. Kikvidze himself was on friendly terms with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, but, despite the admonitions of Proshyan, who came to him (after the failure of the Left Socialist Revolutionary uprising in Moscow in the summer of 1918), he refused to support the movement of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Nurturing distrust of the army command, Kikvidze jealously defended his “autonomy” and divisional separatism. The same “line,” although somewhat less zealously, was pursued in Sievers’ division. The situation was much worse in Mironov’s Cossack regiments, where military commissars were not allowed, political work was hindered, and overt agitation against the communists was carried out. Before the party line changed in peasant question(condemnation of the forced imposition of socialism in the countryside at the VIII Congress of the RCP) the mood in the mobilized peasant units of the army was often anti-communist. Meanwhile, the Cossack front was disintegrating due to the struggle between the old and the young, the revelation of the monarchist tendencies of the high Don command, fatigue and the desire for field work. Supplies, equipment and replenishment of the red troops were improving. The mechanism of the revolutionary regular army took shape and began its proper work. In the spring of 1919, Krasnov's army suffered a series of decisive defeats and collapsed with amazing speed. The Cossack regiments abandoned and surrendered their weapons, Krasnov transferred command of the remnants of his army to Denikin. Denikin's performance volunteer army, which relied on the military support of the Anglo-French and had regular officer regiments, stopped the offensive Soviet armies near Novocherkassk.
Having crossed the Don steppes with the advancing units, he went to Moscow, where he took part in the work of the VIII Congress as a member of the commission for the revision of the party program and a rapporteur on military development, defending the need for a speedy transition from partisan separatism to a centralized “regular” revolutionary army. After the congress, he was sent by the Revolutionary Council of the Southern Front to the 13th Army, where Army Commander Kozhevnikov personified the worst traditions of partisanship. Then he took part in organizing the fight against the Cossack uprising on the upper Don. This uprising, raised by the Cossack villages that had recently separated from Krasnov, partly due to the mistakes of the Soviet punitive and food authorities, was a unique attempt to find a middle Cossack line between the landowners and the workers' and peasants' political line. The social basis of the uprising was the antagonism of the interests of the wealthy, large-land and large-little Cossacks, who, since the involvement of the Don region in grain exports, were on the path of transformation from small-scale single-lord gentry into capitalist farming, and the land-poor peasantry of neighboring provinces; Having previously worked for hire from the Cossacks and settled here and there on small plots, the peasants, after the victory of the Soviet troops, began to implement land and property equalization. The uprising of the Upper Don villages was, in a sense, a war of iron roofs against thatched roofs; a Cossack's house could, as a rule, be identified from a peasant's house by the roof. With the transition of Denikin's army to the offensive against Moscow, the Red Army had to leave the line of the lower Don, and the rebel Upper Don villages joined Denikin's front.
During the Mamontov raid on the rear of the Red armies of the southern front, he was sent to the Revolutionary Council of the 8th Army in Voronezh. He took part in the offensive of the 8th and 13th armies on Kharkov, which, having succeeded as a demonstration (the patrols of the 8th Army were two dozen miles from Kharkov), which drew back enemy forces, put, however, the 8th Army, which was then forced to retreat. yu army in an extremely difficult situation. Surrounded on three sides, and sometimes cut off on all sides, the army retreated from Volchansk to Voronezh, occasionally having difficulty communicating with the neighboring 13th Army and the front-line command by radio and airplanes. Raids by Mamontov units on the rear of the army had a disorganizing and demoralizing effect. The capture of a member of the Revolutionary Council of the 8th Army, Vladimir Baryshnikov, by the Mamontov patrol dates back to this period. The army headquarters wandered from place to place, always at risk of being taken by surprise; Some of the headquarters workers deserted, and some ran over to the whites. Under these conditions, he was appointed commander of the army, which was undertaken to strengthen confidence in the army command. Denikin's campaign against Moscow at this time achieved the utmost success. Orel was taken, Tula was under attack. But these were successes purchased at the cost of exerting the last of our exhausted strength. Peasant reserves poured into the Red Army in a wide wave, while the whites were surrounded by an atmosphere of peasant hostility. Strong units transferred from the eastern front, together with the cavalry army removed from the Tsaritsyn sector, ensured the success of the Red Army's transition to the offensive. The rollback of Denikin's army back to Kuban began. The difficult march from Voronezh to Rostov necessitated a break; the need to regroup forces after the capture of Rostov also made military operations temporarily less active. White's attempt to reoccupy Rostov ended in failure. The Kuban Cossacks, opposed to the whites after the reprisal of the Denikinites against the petty-bourgeois democratic wing of the Kuban Rada (the hanging of Bych, etc.), did not provide the retreating “cadets” with adequate support. Cossacks and mobilized peasants in whole units went over to the Reds. Shells, cartridges, supplies - everything was from the “white” reserves. The offensive was carried out, the further the more, mainly by the forces of defectors. By the end of the campaign, in many regiments the overwhelming majority of the soldiers, and in some cases the command staff, consisted of yesterday's "whites". Denikin failed to stay on the Kuban line either. A quick roundabout movement along the seashore to Novorossiysk, carried out by the 8th Army, brought final panic to the White retreat; the officer regiments were hastily removed from the front and, under the protection of English cannons and English troops, were put on ships within twenty-four hours. Cossacks surrendered in thousands. Novorossiysk, with its richest reserves of equipment, weapons and all kinds of military property, went to the Red armies as a trophy. A large number of horses were drowned by those retreating into the sea. But also large quantity horses wandered unattended through the city and its environs in long lines. The surrounding peasants recruited horses as much as they could, but many hundreds died from lack of food, and this massive horse hecatomb was, as it were, the completion of that gigantic extermination of these four-legged instruments of war, which, with an endless ribbon of skeletons, marked the steppe roads along which the cavalry and convoys had moved so many times, advancing and retreating. Having traveled from Voronezh to Novorossiysk together with units of the 8th Army, he then returned to Moscow (in April 1920) and, considering the civil war period to be basically over, returned to work in the editorial office of Pravda. He became a member of the MK, led the school of propagandists; participated in the Second Congress of the Comintern. In August 1920, he was sent to Turkestan as chairman of the Turkestan Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and commander of the Turkestan Front (members of the Turkestan Commission were Safarov, Koganovich and Peters). He led the organization of Soviet power in Bukhara after the overthrow of the emir. He took a close part in military operations against the Basmachi in Fergana, which ended in the complete defeat of one of the largest Basmachi leaders, Khol-Haji. Khol-Khaja, a former criminal convict, a bandit of extraordinary height and strength, fled with his squad into the mountains towards the Chinese border, but died on a narrow path under a snowfall; although the legend started by the Basmachi claimed that Khol-Khaja was saved from death by flying angels, his disappearance was final. However, the weakening of the Basmach movement was achieved by economic and other measures no less than by military ones: a monetary reform was carried out that eliminated special Turkestan banknotes - “turkbons” - which depreciated even faster than national money; Turkbons were exchanged for all-Soviet money and a recalculation of prices and wages was organized for money new to Turkestan; the surplus appropriation system was abolished (before abolition on a general scale), replaced by a tax; general natural labor service was abolished, free transportation to markets and trade in them was allowed; mullahs who declared their political loyalty were released; Soviet governing bodies were transferred from Russian cities to native cities and neighborhoods; in Semirechye, they began to return to the Kyrgyz lands that had been arbitrarily seized from them by Russian settlers; measures have been taken to restore cotton growing in Fergana and the need for government support for handicraftsmen has been recognized; it is planned to organize a union of the rural poor ("koshchi"), etc. d. The totality of these carried out by the Turkic Commission with the participation of those brought to responsible government activities Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Turkmen workers (Rakhimbaev, Turyakulov, Khodzhanov, Atabaev, Biryushev) created a calmer environment in Turkestan and established the preconditions for strengthening Soviet power, developing the economy and liberating local bodies from the influence of the native bourgeoisie (bais).
In the discussion about trade unions that began at the end of 1920, he supported the “buffer faction”, believing, however, that the main problem to be solved was not the question of trade unions, but the question of relations with the peasantry and the concessions necessary in relation to the peasantry. Due to a serious illness, from the beginning of 1921 to the autumn of 1921 he could not take part in work. In November 1921, in connection with the changes introduced by the new economic policy into the financial policy of the party, he returned to financial work, interrupted in 1918, and was appointed a member of the Narkomfin board and, soon after that, deputy Narkomfin. Due to the absence of the People's Commissar of Finance, Krestinsky (appointed in the fall of 1921 as plenipotentiary envoy to Germany), he headed the People's Commissariat, and in the fall of 1922 he was appointed People's Commissar of Finance; remained in this job until January 1926. The main tasks of this period of financial activity were: the organization of the commissariat of finance, whose institutions were almost completely liquidated during the era of military communism, the creation of a solid deficit-free budget and the development of norms of Soviet budget law, the elimination of natural taxation and the organization of a monetary system taxes and income, the introduction of hard currency, the creation of a system of banking institutions in conjunction with the State Bank, the organization of state credit operations (short-term and long-term loans), the creation of State Insurance and state labor savings banks, the differentiation of state and local budgets, the widespread development of the latter and, in particular, volosts budgets, introduction of financial discipline and reporting. The greatest difficulties were posed by the abolition of natural taxes and the introduction of progressive income taxation in the countryside, the cessation of paper money emission for budgetary needs, the fight against unrealistic economic plans that threatened new inflation, the establishment of the correct proportions for satisfying national, republican and local interests, and the defense of the correct proportion in satisfying the purely political, cultural and economic needs of the country. The most active workers of Narkomfin during this period were Vladimirov, Sheinman, Reingold, Tumanov, Yurovsky, Shleifer, Bryukhanov, Polyudov, Kuznetsov, R. Levin.
In the summer of 1922, he participated in the Soviet delegation to the Hague Conference and spoke at one of the conference meetings with a detailed report on the financial situation Soviet state, which provoked fierce attacks from the entire bourgeois press. In the fall of 1923, while preparing for monetary reform, he defended the policy of credit restriction and lowering industrial prices, and participated in political discussions on the side of the majority of the Central Committee. In the fall of 1925, he defended the point of view of necessity, along with ensuring the possibility of a rapid rise in agriculture as the basis of a powerful industry, a clear class policy in the countryside and in the internal party disagreements of 1925-26. supported by the minority of the Central Committee. In the spring of 1926 he was appointed deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee. In the summer of 1926, together with his wife, G. O. Serebryakova, he went to Soed. Northern States America to negotiate a financial agreement. Kellogg's cancellation of the promised permission to enter America interrupted this trip halfway.
He spoke on financial policy issues at congresses of Soviets and sessions of the Central Executive Committee. At the XI Congress of the RCP, on behalf of the Central Committee of the party, he made a report on financial policy and defended a draft resolution that outlined the main lines for building the Soviet financial system.
Literary works on financial issues are collected in the books: “Financial Policy of the Revolution” (two volumes) and “Currency Reform”. The brochures “Autumn hitches and problems of economic deployment” and “The path traveled and new tasks” are devoted to the economic difficulties of the end of 1926.
He took part in the work of the Comintern congresses. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1917 to 1919 and from 1922 to the present time.
[Since 1926, Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR. Since 1928 chairman of the Oil Syndicate. Since 1929, Plenipotentiary Representative of the USSR in Great Britain, and since 1935, 1st Deputy People's Commissar of the Forestry Industry of the USSR. Candidate member of the party Central Committee in 1930-36. Unreasonably repressed. In 1937, in the case of the “Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center”, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Rehabilitated posthumously.]
Excellent definition
Incomplete definition ↓
Sokolnikov G. Ya. (Brilliant, 1888-1939; autobiography). - Born on August 15, 1888 in the district town of Poltava province. Romnakh, where my father served as a doctor on the Li-bavo-Romenskaya railway. d. Learned to read early (5 years old).
After the family moved to Moscow, he entered the fifth classical Moscow gymnasium, which retained the teaching of Latin and Greek in its program.
As a Jew, he suffered persecution from the gymnasium authorities. “Classical” studies pushed me into self-education circles that multiplied like mushrooms; self-education circles spontaneously grew into political circles.
In the political circles of youth, in the context of the rapidly growing (1903-05) revolutionary movement, there was a stratification and selection of those who took the side of the proletariat.
After becoming acquainted with populist and Marxist literature, he joined the Moscow Marxist circles (he was especially close to the circle of M. Luntz, Narkirier, and others), where the main legal Marxist books were carefully studied and illegal periodicals and pamphlets were regularly read.
The “transport” of foreign literature delivered to the apartment for storage introduced the theoretical and tactical disagreements discussed in foreign Social-Democrats. print.
At underground youth parties he argued with the Social Revolutionaries and Tolstoyans (S. Durylin, Gusev). Among the first acquaintances of the “underground workers” was Loginov (Anton), through whom a connection was established with Moscow. Bolshevik committee.
In 1905 he joined the Moscow Bolshevik organization and led the Social-Democrats. movement of students, participated in the December uprising.
On matters of organizing student youth, I often met with M. N. Pokrovsky, N. N. Rozhkov, Mitskevich, and Tseytlin.
The choice between joining the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks was made largely on the basis of an assessment of the position of both factions on the question of the role of the proletariat in the democratic revolution and participation in the provisional government.
In the spring of 1906, he joined the propaganda board of the City District, working mainly among printers, then worked in the Sokolnichesky District, first as a propagandist among weavers, then as a member of the district committee - an organizer, agitator, propagandist.
At the same time he worked in the “military technical bureau” at Moscow. to those - the center of the Bolshevik fighting squads.
This period includes acquaintances with Victor (Taratuta), Bur (Hesse), Mark (Lyubimov).
The connection with Vlas (Likhachev) was especially close.
According to military-technical the bureau was associated with “Semyon Semenovich” (Kostitsyn) and “Eros” (P.K. Sternberg).
Street rallies, forest crowds, sudden appearances of Bolshevik speakers in workers' barracks, a school for workers' propagandists, proclamations and handicraft leaflets written and printed by workers - all this caused close police attention and triple surveillance.
During the massive failures in Moscow in the fall of 1907, the Sokolnichesky district also failed. Having been arrested at a meeting surrounded by police, he spent several days in the Sokolnicheskaya part, then was transferred to Butyrka prison, from where in February 1909 he was sent to a settlement.
Before his transfer, he was sent to work alone, swept Dolgorukovskaya Street together with criminals and received the traditional “kopecks” from kind-hearted passers-by.
For refusing to take off his hat when passing the prison governor, shortly before being sent to Siberia, he was put in a basement punishment cell, shackled and transferred to the position of a convict.
Trial in the fall of 1908 in the judicial chamber on charges of belonging to the Sokolniki district committee of the Social Democratic Party. Bolsheviks (Article 102) ended with a sentence of eternal settlement.
A year and a half of being in solitary confinement was a time of systematic reading on economics, history, and philosophy.
Reading was usually varied by playing chess with neighbors using the wall-tapping method.
Despite the confiscations of chess, which were made from bread, and punishments for knocking, this game flourished.
In these years, the solitary regime in the Butyrka prison was relatively decent, the deterioration began at the end of 1908. A prison handwritten journal was published by B. Plyusnin, one of the most active employees of which was N. L. Meshcheryakov, who at that time was awaiting trial with his co-trials - N. Sokolov , Veselov, etc. In the prison bathhouse, amid thick steam, splashing water and the knocking of wooden gangs, heated debates were held about empiriomonism and dialectics.
The unsuccessful escape of the maximalist expropriator, who tried to escape from the bathhouse dressed in the dress of an overseer, led, however, to a revision of the charter of bathhouse liberties and to a significant reduction in them. After four months of wandering around the prison camp and sitting in transit prisons, he was taken to the place of settlement, in the village of Rybnoye on the Angara (Yenisei region).
In the Krasnoyarsk transit prison I met with Ordzhonikidze, Erkomashvili, and Shklovsky.
On the Angara, polemical abstracts against the Socialist Revolutionaries and organizational meetings of exiles were interspersed with excursions to the taiga and work on supplying bark to a local merchant. Together with Shklovsky, he fled the settlement after a six-week stay in Rybnoye.
Through Moscow he reached Mariampol (near the Prussian border) and, with the assistance of Stoklitsky, escaped across the border.
Having settled in Paris in the fall of 1909, he headed the Proletary workers' club on Lenin's instructions. At that time, emigrant meetings took place in the Russian library on Avenue de Gobelin, at which Lenin fought against the liquidators and otzovists.
I met Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya at the editorial office of the Sots.-Democrat Central Organ, where she usually carefully collected information about what was happening in Russia from visitors who came to the editorial office.
Lenin was first seen at a meeting of the Paris Bolshevik group; was his report on two possible paths of agricultural development in Russia.
There was a difficult period at the height of the reaction, but Lenin exuded indestructible firmness and cheerfulness.
He lived in a tiny apartment on Marie-Rose Street, spent long hours working at the National Library, in the evening in a small, sparkling clean kitchen, and over a more than simple dinner, V.I. talked with comrades who dropped in to see him.
In Paris he graduated from the Faculty of Law and a doctorate course in economic sciences. During the split after the plenum of the Central Committee in the spring of 1910, he joined the group of Bolshevik party members [in which Mark (Lyubimov), Leva (Vladimirov), Lozovsky (Dridzo) and others participated]. He took part in the newspaper “For the Party” published by the group. I met a couple of times with Plekhanov, who at that time was grouping around himself the anti-liquidation Mensheviks; the arrogance with which Plekhanov behaved could not, however, hide the fact that he was already losing the ability to navigate Russian affairs. Later in Switzerland he organized the “Swiss Bureau of Foreign Groups of Bolshevik Party Members.” Having taken an internationalist position from the first days of the war, he was active in Swiss social services. party, collaborated in the internationalist newspaper “Our Word”, published in Paris, in the editorship of which L. Trotsky participated, gave abstracts on imperialism, prospects for the socialist revolution, etc. in a number of Swiss cities and, supporting the Zimmerwald “left” after Zimmerwald, moved closer to the position of the Bolshevik Central Committee.
He left for Russia after the February Revolution with the first group of emigrants, which included Lenin, Zinoviev, Radek, Kharitonov, Inessa Armand, Miringof, Lilina, Usnevich and others. The journey in a “sealed carriage” through Germany was filled with discussions of tactical platforms on an empty stomach - it was decided in principle to refuse the liquid soup that the German Red Cross was going to treat the travelers to. Two delegates from the Central Committee of the German Social-Democratic Party, who tried to get into the carriage to bring greetings to Lenin, had to hastily retreat in view of the ultimatum presented to them - to leave if they did not want to be pushed out in the neck. This ultimatum formulated by Lenin was presented to the delegates without rhetorical softening and had the desired effect.
The meeting of the passengers of the “sealed carriage” in Sweden was organized by Ganetsky.
Information about the persecution launched against Lenin and the group of Bolsheviks traveling with him forced us to admit the possibility of an attempt by the Provisional Government to arrest the visitors after crossing the Russian border.
Just in case (at Lenin’s suggestion), they agreed on how to behave during interrogations, etc. In Petrograd, he entered into negotiations on joint work with the leaders of the so-called “mezhrayonka” - an organization of united internationalists, with which foreign groups of Bolsheviks were in contact - party members.
This organization, which later merged with the Bolshevik Party, then spoke out against an immediate merger with the Bolsheviks.
This circumstance made it impossible to join the “interdistrict”. Having left Petrograd for Moscow (in April 1917), he returned to the Moscow Bolshevik organization, to which he was soon elected a member of the Moscow. Committee and Moscow region the Bureau. He was also a member of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet.
At this time, he was close in his work with Bukharin, V.M. Smirnov, Osinsky, Yakovleva, Bubnov, Stukov, Sapronov.
While still abroad, he advocated a program for the seizure of power by the Soviets and the launch of a socialist revolution; in accordance with this, he supported Lenin’s April theses against some of the Bolsheviks who at the first moment spoke out against the “theses”. During campaign trips around the Moscow region, he was arrested by officers in Kineshma, but was repulsed and released by soldiers of the reserve unit stationed there. Participated in Moscow. collection “On the question of revising the party program” was an article that proposed an option for reworking the fundamental part of the old (Social-Democratic) program.
At the VI Congress he was elected to the Central Committee and the editorial board of the Central Organ. Together with I. Stalin, he was a member of the editorial board of newspapers that were published instead of Pravda after the July days - “Worker and Soldier”, “Path of Pravda”, “Voice of Pravda” (in these newspapers he wrote a number of editorials and other articles and reviewed the press) , and then Pravda since the October Revolution.
After the July defeat, Lenin considered a more or less long period of counter-revolutionary violence against the masses likely.
He demanded the preparation of illegal press organs, and at one time considered the hopes of preserving Bolshevik legal newspapers illusory. Kornilov's speech changed the situation much faster.
Kornilov's defeat showed that active proletarian forces go to fight only under the leadership of the Bolsheviks.
The Kornilov days were a kind of preliminary “rehearsal” for the October days. Returning from his Finnish refuge, Lenin led the revolutionary forces on a rapid offensive.
S. was a member of the Petrograd Executive Committee.
Council, and then a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets.
He belonged to the majority of the Central Committee that, together with Lenin, voted for the uprising and carried it out, and was a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, elected during the uprising.
After the October Revolution, he was sent to Brest as part of a delegation authorized to negotiate an armistice.
Upon returning from Brest, he developed a draft decree on the nationalization of private banks, supervised their nationalization and, together with a group of bankers (Tumanov, Basias, Kogan), carried out the reorganization of the former. private banks and their mergers.
He took part in the “capture” of the State Court. bank and its revolutionary reorganization.
According to the Bolshevik candidate lists, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly.
Participation in the Brest armistice negotiations determined the second trip to Brest in the spring of 1918 (after the breakdown of peace negotiations and the resumption of the German offensive) as the chairman of the peace delegation, which was entrusted to the Central Committee to accept the ultimatum proposals of the German command and sign peace (the delegation included Chicherin, Ioffe, Karakhan).
When there were disagreements in the Central Committee on the issue of resuming negotiations and the statement of readiness to sign peace, he supported the position defended by Lenin.
It goes without saying that there was no confidence that the peace proposal would be accepted by the German government, and the appearance on the tape of the Hughes apparatus late at night of the first words of the German response agreeing to resume negotiations was largely unexpected for everyone, especially since the delay in the response, The continued movement of German troops and their capture of Pskov created from hour to hour the impression that the peaceful maneuver was unsuccessful.
The Soviet delegation, not reaching Pskov due to the destruction of the railway. path, loaded onto handcars, and finally walked the last part of the way to the German lines late in the evening.
The command of the forward units, not aware of the resumption of negotiations, was in great perplexity and initially did not know what to do with the delegation that appeared in such a strange and unexpected way.
German soldiers justified the offensive by the need to liberate the outlying peoples from Russian oppression.
The departure of the delegation from Pskov to Brest was accompanied by a hostile demonstration of the city crowd, among which there was a provocative rumor that, under the guise of a trip of a peace delegation, members of the Soviet government, which had been overthrown in Russia, were fleeing.
The German government stated that the offensive would continue until the treaty was signed.
The peace delegation, however, did not have instructions to conduct long-term negotiations: due to the complete exposure of the front, the massive withdrawal of units of the old army hundreds of miles to the rear and the weakness of the organized red detachments, resistance to the German ultimatum was impossible.
Its conditions were further worsened by the inclusion of new Turkish demands presented at the very last moment.
When signing the peace, as the chairman of the Soviet delegation (the chairman of the German delegation was von Rosenberg, later the Minister of Foreign Affairs), he made a speech in which, to the great indignation of those present, led by General. Hoffmann gave a sharp characterization of the German ultimatum to the German generals of the eastern front and expressed confidence that the triumph of imperialism over the Soviet country was only temporary and transitory.
Upon returning from Brest, together with the Central Committee (in the spring of 1918), he moved to Moscow and returned to work in the editorial office of the central organ of Pravda, which had been moved to Moscow. In the brochure "On the Question of National Banks" he assessed the significance of the nationalization of banks and the future role of credit institutions.
At the first All-Russian At the Congress of Economic Councils in the summer of 1918, he made a report on the fundamentals of financial policy during the transition period, objecting to the policy of abolishing money. He defended the same principles in articles published then in the National Economy. Soon (in June) he was included in a commission sent to Berlin, which was to draw up economic and legal agreements additional to the peace treaty.
The time of these negotiations included Krasin’s trip to Ludendorff’s headquarters and negotiations with him on stopping the movement of German troops to Baku. Ludendorff's firmly planned plan for cutting off the Caucasus and Turkestan was thwarted by the landing of American troops on the French coast, which created a new military situation and excluded the possibility of implementing the military plans of the extreme right wing of the German imperialists in Russia.
In Berlin, I read a number of reports at meetings of independent socialists and in Spartacist circles.
Together with Bukharin he visited Kautsky, conversations with whom were, however, immediately interrupted due to obvious futility.
After the murder of Mirbach, there was a break in the negotiations, and the commission went back.
In a report to Lenin upon his return to Moscow, he informed him about the growth of the revolutionary movement in Germany and the rapidly progressing process of disintegration of the army and soldier riots.
Meanwhile, the White Guard uprising in the Volga region, raised by the Socialist Revolutionary Committee of the Constituent Assembly and supported by the Czech-Slovak legions, began to emerge as a serious threat - the epic of civil war was approaching. As a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 2nd Army of the Eastern Front, he went to Vyatka (together with S. Gusev); to the post of commander of the 2nd Army, members of the Revolutionary Military Council nominated Colonel Shorin of the old army, who was one of the first “military experts” among the army commanders. The 2nd Army was supposed to liquidate the uprising at the Izhevsk and Botkin factories and prevent the rebels from uniting with the troops of the founders.
There were kulak uprisings around Vyatka; food detachments sent from Moscow partially joined the rebels. The 2nd Army suffered a number of setbacks in the first clashes.
This collection of individual detachments did not initially represent one organized whole.
The detachments consisted of partisans - workers, sailors, volunteer soldiers who went through the school of imperialist war and were transferred from the German front.
Requisitions of food, horses, hay, and premises caused acute friction with the peasantry.
The mobilization of local peasants into the ranks of the Red Army was achieved with enormous difficulties: those mobilized deserted after receiving uniforms, or surrendered to the enemy in battle at the first skirmishes; There were also direct betrayals of large and small units.
While the main forces of the reorganized second army launched an offensive on Izhevsk, a special division, in the formation of which he took a direct part, was entrusted with the movement to the Votkinsk plant. The formation of the division was interspersed with battles, which in the wooded Kama foothills boiled down to a fierce struggle for Tatar villages, subjected to day and night raids.
The front line could only conditionally be called a line: individual units had difficulty maintaining contact with each other, and often in one area the red companies were in the rear of the whites, while in another area the whites found themselves in the rear of the reds.
Sometimes the “front” moved forty miles forward in a day, and seventy miles back in a night. The regular part of the division was the Latvian regiment under the command of Colonel Tauman, who preferred to act cautiously, slowly and surely; the shock roles were performed by a partisan sailor detachment, which was hardly kept under discipline by its commissar, Baryshnikov (later the military commissar of the Glazov district), who stood out for his personal boundless courage; The mobilized battalions were commanded by military commissar Malygin, who emerged from local peasants, and “specialists” - young officers of the old army, including Staff Captain Ginet, who was hacked to death by the whites when, during the flight of his soldiers, he tried to detain the enemy in a thin advanced chain.
The Whites, relying on arms factories, had more weapons and ammunition; in dangerous moments they carried out a wholesale mobilization of all workers and drove them into battle, placing punitive companies in the second line that fired at the retreating ones.
After two months of struggle, during which the leadership of the uprising at the factories increasingly passed from the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks to the monarchist bureaucrats and officers, who were especially abundant in Izhevsk, the whites retreated beyond the Kama (later the white Izhevsk units joined Kolchak’s army).
A turning point in peasant sentiments in the Volga region and the defeat of the army of the Uchr Committee. collection near Kazan essentially predetermined the failure of the Izhevsk-Votkinsk uprising.
From the 2nd Army he was transferred after the liquidation of the Izhevsk uprising to the southern front and, as a member of the front's Revolutionary Council, was sent to the 9th Army, where the commander was Knyagnitsky (an engineer, an old Bolshevik) and members of the Revolutionary Council were Dashkevich and Vladimir Baryshnikov (Moscow party worker, later captured by General Mamontov and executed by the Whites after much torture).
The basis of the 9th Army were the partisan volunteer divisions of Kikvidze and Sivers and the mounted partisan Cossack division of Mironov.
Kikvidze was one of the best partisan military organizers; its units consisted of a cadre of old soldiers who, together with Kikvidze, had gone through a long journey from the Austrian border to the Volga in battles with the Germans, Petliurists and Cossacks, and during this long march acquired reliable reinforcements from revolutionary volunteer workers.
Kikvidze himself was on friendly terms with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, but, despite the admonitions of Proshyan, who came to him (after the failure of the Left Socialist Revolutionary uprising in Moscow in the summer of 1918), he refused to support the movement of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.
Nurturing distrust of the army command, Kikvidze jealously defended his “autonomy” and divisional separatism.
The same “line,” although somewhat less zealously, was pursued in Sievers’ division.
The situation was much worse in Mironov’s Cossack regiments, where military commissars were not allowed, political work was hindered, and overt agitation against the communists was carried out.
Before the change in the party line on the peasant issue (condemnation of the forced imposition of socialism in the countryside at the Eighth Congress of the RCP), the mood in the mobilized peasant units of the army was often anti-communist.
Meanwhile, the Cossack front was disintegrating due to the struggle between the old and the young, the revelation of the monarchist tendencies of the high Don command, fatigue and the desire for field work.
Supplies, equipment and replenishment of the red troops were improving.
The mechanism of the revolutionary regular army took shape and began its proper work.
In the spring of 1919, Krasnov's army suffered a series of decisive defeats and collapsed with amazing speed.
The Cossack regiments abandoned and surrendered their weapons, Krasnov transferred command of the remnants of his army to Denikin.
The performance of Denikin's volunteer army, which relied on the military support of the Anglo-French and had regular officer regiments, stopped the advance of the Soviet armies near Novocherkassk.
Having crossed the Don steppes with the advancing units, he went to Moscow, where he took part in the work of the VIII Congress as a member of the commission for the revision of the party program and a rapporteur on military development, defending the need for a speedy transition from partisan separatism to a centralized “regular” revolutionary army. After the congress, he was sent by the Revolutionary Council of the Southern Front to the 13th Army, where Army Commander Kozhevnikov personified the worst traditions of partisanship.
Then he took part in organizing the fight against the Cossack uprising on the upper Don. This uprising, raised by the Cossack villages that had recently separated from Krasnov, partly due to the mistakes of the Soviet punitive and food authorities, was a unique attempt to find a middle Cossack line between the landowners and the workers' and peasants' political line.
The social basis of the uprising was the antagonism of the interests of the wealthy, large-land and large-little Cossacks, who, since the involvement of the Don region in grain exports, were on the path of transformation from small-scale single-lord gentry into capitalist farming, and the land-poor peasantry of neighboring provinces; Having previously worked for hire from the Cossacks and settled here and there on small plots, the peasants, after the victory of the Soviet troops, began to implement land and property equalization.
The uprising of the Upper Don villages was, in a sense, a war of iron roofs against thatched roofs; a Cossack's house could, as a rule, be identified from a peasant's house by the roof. With the transition of Denikin's army to the offensive against Moscow, the Red Army had to leave the line of the lower Don, and the rebel Upper Don villages joined Denikin's front. During the Mamontov raid on the rear of the Red armies of the southern front, he was sent to the Revolutionary Council of the 8th Army in Voronezh.
He took part in the offensive of the 8th and 13th armies on Kharkov, which, having succeeded as a demonstration (the patrols of the 8th Army were two dozen miles from Kharkov), which drew back enemy forces, put, however, the 8th Army, which was then forced to retreat. yu army in an extremely difficult situation.
Surrounded on three sides, and sometimes cut off on all sides, the army retreated from Volchansk to Voronezh, occasionally having difficulty communicating with the neighboring 13th Army and the front-line command by radio and airplanes.
Raids by Mamontov units on the rear of the army had a disorganizing and demoralizing effect.
The capture of a member of the Revolutionary Council of the 8th Army, Vladimir Baryshnikov, by the Mamontov patrol dates back to this period.
The army headquarters wandered from place to place, always at risk of being taken by surprise; Some of the headquarters workers deserted, and some ran over to the whites. Under these conditions, he was appointed commander of the army, which was undertaken to strengthen confidence in the army command.
Denikin's campaign against Moscow at this time achieved the utmost success.
Orel was taken, Tula was under attack.
But these were successes purchased at the cost of exerting the last of our exhausted strength. Peasant reserves poured into the Red Army in a wide wave, while the whites were surrounded by an atmosphere of peasant hostility.
Strong units transferred from the eastern front, together with the cavalry army removed from the Tsaritsyn sector, ensured the success of the Red Army's transition to the offensive.
The rollback of Denikin's army back to Kuban began.
The difficult march from Voronezh to Rostov necessitated a break; the need to regroup forces after the capture of Rostov also made military operations temporarily less active.
White's attempt to reoccupy Rostov ended in failure.
The Kuban Cossacks, opposed to the whites after the reprisal of the Denikinites against the petty-bourgeois democratic wing of the Kuban Rada (the hanging of Bych, etc.), did not provide the retreating “cadets” with adequate support.
Cossacks and mobilized peasants in whole units went over to the Reds.
Shells, cartridges, supplies - everything was from the “white” reserves. The offensive was carried out, the further the more, mainly by the forces of defectors.
By the end of the campaign, in many regiments the overwhelming majority of the soldiers, and in some cases the command staff, consisted of yesterday's "whites". Denikin failed to stay on the Kuban line either.
A quick roundabout movement along the seashore to Novorossiysk, carried out by the 8th Army, brought final panic to the White retreat; the officer regiments were hastily removed from the front and, under the protection of English cannons and English troops, were put on ships within twenty-four hours. Cossacks surrendered in thousands. Novorossiysk, with its richest reserves of equipment, weapons and all kinds of military property, went to the Red armies as a trophy.
A large number of horses were drowned by those retreating into the sea. But an even larger number of horses wandered unattended through the city and its environs in long lines.
The surrounding peasants recruited horses as much as they could, but many hundreds died from lack of food, and this massive horse hecatomb was, as it were, the completion of that gigantic extermination of these four-legged instruments of war, which, with an endless ribbon of skeletons, marked the steppe roads along which the cavalry and convoys had moved so many times, advancing and retreating. Having traveled from Voronezh to Novorossiysk together with units of the 8th Army, he then returned to Moscow (in April 1920) and, considering the civil war period to be basically over, returned to work in the editorial office of Pravda. He became a member of the MK, led the school of propagandists; participated in the Second Congress of the Comintern.
In August 1920, he was sent to Turkestan as chairman of the Turkestan Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and commander of the Turkestan Front (members of the Turkestan Commission were Safarov, Koganovich and Peters).
He led the organization of Soviet power in Bukhara after the overthrow of the emir. He took a close part in military operations against the Basmachi in Fergana, which ended in the complete defeat of one of the largest Basmachi leaders, Khol-Haji. Khol-Khaja, a former criminal convict, a bandit of extraordinary height and strength, fled with his squad into the mountains towards the Chinese border, but died on a narrow path under a snowfall; although the legend started by the Basmachi claimed that Khol-Khaja was saved from death by flying angels, his disappearance was final.
However, the weakening of the Basmach movement was achieved by economic and other measures no less than by military ones: a monetary reform was carried out that eliminated special Turkestan banknotes - “turkbons” - which depreciated even faster than national money; Turkbons were exchanged for all-Soviet money and a recalculation of prices and wages was organized for money new to Turkestan; the surplus appropriation system was abolished (before abolition on a general scale), replaced by a tax; general natural labor service was abolished, free transportation to markets and trade in them was allowed; mullahs who declared their political loyalty were released; Soviet governing bodies were transferred from Russian cities to native cities and neighborhoods; in Semirechye, they began to return to the Kyrgyz lands that had been arbitrarily seized from them by Russian settlers; measures have been taken to restore cotton growing in Fergana and the need for government support for handicraftsmen has been recognized; the organization of a union of the rural poor ("koshchi"), etc. is planned. The totality of these carried out by the Turkic Commission with the participation of Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Turkmen workers involved in responsible state activities (Rakhimbaev, Turyakulov, Khojanov, Atabaev, Biryushev) created a calmer situation in Turkestan and established the prerequisites for strengthening Soviet power, developing the economy and liberating local bodies from the influence of the native bourgeoisie (bais). In the discussion about trade unions that began at the end of 1920, he supported the “buffer faction”, believing, however, that the main problem to be solved was not the question of trade unions, but the question of relations with the peasantry and the concessions necessary in relation to the peasantry.
Due to a serious illness, from the beginning of 1921 to the autumn of 1921 he could not take part in work.
In November 1921, in connection with the changes introduced by the new economic policy into the financial policy of the party, he returned to financial work, interrupted in 1918, and was appointed a member of the Narkomfin board and, soon after that, deputy Narkomfin.
Due to the absence of the People's Commissar of Finance, Krestinsky (appointed in the fall of 1921 as plenipotentiary envoy to Germany), he headed the People's Commissariat, and in the fall of 1922 he was appointed People's Commissar of Finance; remained in this job until January 1926. The main tasks of this period of financial activity were: the organization of the commissariat of finance, whose institutions were almost completely liquidated during the era of military communism, the creation of a solid deficit-free budget and the development of norms of Soviet budget law, the elimination of natural taxation and the organization of a monetary system taxes and income, the introduction of hard currency, the creation of a system of banking institutions in conjunction with the State Bank, the organization of state credit operations (short-term and long-term loans), the creation of State Insurance and state labor savings banks, the differentiation of state and local budgets, the widespread development of the latter and, in particular, volosts budgets, introduction of financial discipline and reporting.
The greatest difficulties were posed by the abolition of natural taxes and the introduction of progressive income taxation in the countryside, the cessation of paper money emission for budgetary needs, the fight against unrealistic economic plans that threatened new inflation, the establishment of the correct proportions for satisfying national, republican and local interests, and the defense of the correct proportion in satisfying the purely political, cultural and economic needs of the country.
The most active workers of Narkomfin during this period were Vladimirov, Sheinman, Reingold, Tumanov, Yurovsky, Shleifer, Bryukhanov, Polyudov, Kuznetsov, R. Levin. In the summer of 1922, he participated in the Soviet delegation to the Hague Conference and spoke at one of the conference meetings with a detailed report on the financial situation of the Soviet state, which caused fierce attacks from the entire bourgeois press.
In the fall of 1923, while preparing for monetary reform, he defended the policy of credit restriction and lowering industrial prices, and participated in political discussions on the side of the majority of the Central Committee. In the fall of 1925, he defended the point of view of necessity, along with ensuring the possibility of a rapid rise in agriculture as the basis of a powerful industry, a clear class policy in the countryside and in the internal party disagreements of 1925-26. supported by the minority of the Central Committee. In the spring of 1926 he was appointed deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee.
In the summer of 1926, together with his wife, G. O. Serebryakova, he went to Soed. Northern States America to negotiate a financial agreement.
Kellogg's cancellation of the promised permission to enter America interrupted this trip halfway.
He spoke on financial policy issues at congresses of Soviets and sessions of the Central Executive Committee. At the XI Congress of the RCP, on behalf of the Central Committee of the party, he made a report on financial policy and defended a draft resolution that outlined the main lines for building the Soviet financial system.
Literary works on financial issues are collected in the books: “Financial Policy of the Revolution” (two volumes) and “Currency Reform”. The brochures “Autumn hitches and problems of economic deployment” and “The path traveled and new tasks” are devoted to the economic difficulties of the end of 1926. He took part in the work of the Comintern congresses.
He was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1917 to 1919 and from 1922 to the present time. [Since 1926, Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR. Since 1928 chairman of the Oil Syndicate.
Since 1929, Plenipotentiary Representative of the USSR in Great Britain, and since 1935, 1st Deputy People's Commissar of the Forestry Industry of the USSR. Candidate member of the party Central Committee in 1930-36. Unreasonably repressed.
In 1937, in the case of the “Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center”, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Rehabilitated posthumously.] (Garnet)
