Christian Rakovsky. Rakovsky Christian Georgievich - Biography

(1867-10-09 )

Georgy Stoykov Rakovsky(Bulg. Georgi Stoikov Rakovski, real name Sybi Stoikov Popovich, bulg. Sbi Stoykov Popovich; April, Kotel - October 9, Bucharest) - Bulgarian revolutionary, one of the organizers of the national liberation movement in Bulgaria against Turkish rule, historian, ethnographer, poet, writer and publicist.

Biography

In his youth, Sybi Popovich took the surname Rakovsky, in honor of the village of Rakovo (near Sliven), where the ancestors of his father Stoiko Popovich came from. Sybi was educated at a Greek school in Constantinople. In 1841, Georgy Rakovsky organized a secret society in Athens to prepare an armed uprising in Greece and Bulgaria. He came up with the idea of ​​all-Balkan solidarity in the fight against Turkish despotism. He was arrested and sentenced to death, but - thanks to the intercession of influential Greek friends - he was released and emigrated to France.

A year and a half later, Rakovsky returned to Bulgaria and settled in the town of Kotel.

Since 1855, Rakovsky lived in exile - in Novy Sad (then - part of Hungary, now - in Serbia) and in Moldova, in Bolgrad (now - part of Ukraine).

On March 7, 1858, Georgy Rakovsky crossed the Moldavian-Russian border in the village of Kubey (not far from Bolgrad). Here he wrote the poems "Delay in the Cuban Quarantine" and "Reflections on Bulgaria's Past". Rakovsky actively worked with the Bulgarian diaspora in Russia and Moldova. For some time he lived in Chisinau and Odessa.

In -1862 he created the first Bulgarian legia in Belgrade. At the end of 1866, in Bucharest, he united the Chetnik governors to create a united front for the liberation of Bulgaria.

G. Rakovsky - the ideologist of the Chetnik tactics in the liberation struggle of the Bulgarian people. He considered the created partisan detachments as an initiative force, involving the broad masses of the people in the struggle. In his 1867 " Provisional Law of Forest People's Detachments» formulated the idea of ​​turning individual couples into parts of a centralized military organization. He advocated the creation of secret societies in order to promote the ideas of an uprising against the Turkish authorities.

G. Rakovsky also showed himself as an outstanding, passionate poet. In a poem "Forest Companion" ("Mountain Pytnik". - Novi Sad, 1857) sang the struggle of the Bulgarian haiduks against the oppressors. In the newspapers he published "Bulgarian Diary", "Dunavsky Swan"(Beograd, 1860-1861), magazine "Future"(Bucharest, 1864) promoted the ideas of fraternal solidarity of the Balkan peoples in the struggle for their liberation.

Descendants

The grandson of G.S. Rakovsky was the famous Bolshevik revolutionary Christian Rakovsky. During the Balkan wars, H. Rakovsky took a pro-Turkish position.

Memory

Compositions

• Writings. - Sofia, 1922.

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Notes

Literature

• Sidelnikov S. I. Bulgarian revolutionary George Rakovsky. - Xapkiv, 1959.
• Sidelnikov S.I. G. S. Rakovski. Look, deinost and belly. - Sofia, 1964. - T. 1.
• Penev B. G. S. Rakovski. - Sofia, 1917.

Links

• Rakovsky Georgi Stoykov // Great Soviet Encyclopedia: [in 30 volumes] / ch. ed. A. M. Prokhorov. - 3rd ed. - M. : Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978.
• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
• . Literary encyclopedia. Retrieved April 21, 2012. .

An excerpt characterizing Rakovsky, Georgy

- I? me? .. - said Pierre, feeling the need to belittle his social position as much as possible in order to be closer and more understandable to the soldiers. - I'm a real militia officer, only my squad is not here; I came to the battle and lost mine.
- You see! one of the soldiers said.
The other soldier shook his head.
- Well, eat, if you want, kavardachka! - said the first and gave Pierre, licking it, a wooden spoon.
Pierre sat down by the fire and began to eat the kavardachok, the food that was in the pot and which seemed to him the most delicious of all the foods he had ever eaten. While he greedily, bending over the cauldron, taking away large spoons, chewed one after another and his face was visible in the light of the fire, the soldiers silently looked at him.
- Where do you need it? You say! one of them asked again.
- I'm in Mozhaisk.
- You, became, sir?
- Yes.
- What's your name?
- Pyotr Kirillovich.
- Well, Pyotr Kirillovich, let's go, we'll take you. In complete darkness, the soldiers, together with Pierre, went to Mozhaisk.
The roosters were already crowing when they reached Mozhaisk and began to climb the steep city mountain. Pierre walked along with the soldiers, completely forgetting that his inn was below the mountain and that he had already passed it. He would not have remembered this (he was in such a state of bewilderment) if his bereator had not run into him on the half of the mountain, who went to look for him around the city and returned back to his inn. The landlord recognized Pierre by his hat, which shone white in the darkness.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “we are desperate. What are you walking? Where are you, please!
“Oh yes,” said Pierre.
The soldiers paused.
Well, did you find yours? one of them said.
- Well, goodbye! Pyotr Kirillovich, it seems? Farewell, Pyotr Kirillovich! other voices said.
“Goodbye,” said Pierre and went with his bereator to the inn.
"We must give them!" thought Pierre, reaching for his pocket. “No, don’t,” a voice told him.
There was no room in the upper rooms of the inn: everyone was busy. Pierre went into the yard and, covering himself with his head, lay down in his carriage.

As soon as Pierre laid his head on the pillow, he felt that he was falling asleep; but suddenly, with the clarity of almost reality, a boom, boom, boom of shots was heard, groans, screams, the slap of shells were heard, there was a smell of blood and gunpowder, and a feeling of horror, fear of death seized him. He opened his eyes in fear and lifted his head from under his overcoat. Everything was quiet outside. Only at the gate, talking to the janitor and slapping through the mud, was some kind of orderly. Above Pierre's head, under the dark underside of the plank canopy, doves fluttered from the movement he made while rising. A peaceful, joyful for Pierre at that moment, strong smell of an inn, the smell of hay, manure and tar was poured throughout the courtyard. Between the two black awnings one could see a clear starry sky.
“Thank God that this is no more,” thought Pierre, again closing his head. “Oh, how terrible fear is, and how shamefully I gave myself up to it! And they…they were firm, calm all the time, to the very end…” he thought. In Pierre's understanding, they were soldiers - those who were on the battery, and those who fed him, and those who prayed to the icon. They - these strange, hitherto unknown to him, they were clearly and sharply separated in his thoughts from all other people.
“To be a soldier, just a soldier! thought Pierre, falling asleep. – Enter this common life with your whole being, imbue with what makes them so. But how to throw off all this superfluous, diabolical, all the burden of this external person? One time I could be it. I could run away from my father as I wished. Even after the duel with Dolokhov, I could have been sent as a soldier.” And in Pierre's imagination flashed a dinner at the club where he summoned Dolokhov, and a benefactor in Torzhok. And now Pierre is presented with a solemn dining box. This lodge takes place in the English Club. And someone familiar, close, dear, is sitting at the end of the table. Yes it is! This is a benefactor. “Yes, he died? thought Pierre. - Yes, he died; but I didn't know he was alive. And how sorry I am that he died, and how glad I am that he is alive again! On one side of the table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitsky, Denisov and others like him (the category of these people was just as clearly defined in Pierre’s soul in a dream, as was the category of those people whom he called them), and these people, Anatole, Dolokhov loudly shouted, sang; but behind their cry was heard the voice of the benefactor, speaking incessantly, and the sound of his words was as significant and continuous as the roar of the battlefield, but it was pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what the benefactor was saying, but he knew (the category of thoughts was just as clear in the dream) that the benefactor spoke of goodness, of the possibility of being what they were. And they from all sides, with their simple, kind, firm faces, surrounded the benefactor. But although they were kind, they did not look at Pierre, did not know him. Pierre wanted to draw their attention to himself and say. He got up, but at the same instant his legs became cold and bare.
He felt ashamed, and he covered his legs with his hand, from which the overcoat really fell off. For a moment, Pierre, adjusting his overcoat, opened his eyes and saw the same sheds, pillars, courtyard, but all this was now bluish, light and covered with sparkles of dew or frost.
“Dawn,” thought Pierre. “But that's not it. I need to listen to and understand the words of the benefactor.” He again covered himself with his overcoat, but there was no longer any dining box or benefactor. There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts that someone said or Pierre himself changed his mind.

Christian Georgievich Rakovsky(pseudonym Insarov, present surname Stanchev, born Bulgarian. Christo Rakovski; rum. C ristian Racovschi, Ukrainian Khristiyan Georgiyovich Rakovsky; August 1, 1873, Kotel - September 11, 1941) - Soviet political, state and diplomatic figure. Participated in the revolutionary movement in the Balkans, France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

Youth

Grandson of the famous revolutionary Georgi Rakovsky. Being an ethnic Bulgarian, he had a Romanian passport. He studied at the Bulgarian gymnasium, from where he was expelled twice (in 1886 and 1890) for revolutionary agitation. In 1887 he changed his own name Kristya Stanchev to the more sonorous Christian Rakovsky. From about 1889 he became a convinced Marxist.

Involvement in revolutionary activities

In 1890 Christian Rakovsky emigrated to Geneva in Switzerland where he entered the medical faculty of the University of Geneva. In Geneva, Rakovsky met through Russian emigrants with the Russian Social Democratic movement. In particular, Rakovsky became closely acquainted with the founder of the Marxist movement in the Russian Empire, Georgy Valentinovich Plekhanov. Participated in the organization of the international congress of socialist students in Geneva. In 1893, as a delegate from Bulgaria, he attended the Socialist International Congress in Zurich. Collaborated in the first Bulgarian Marxist magazine "The Day" and the social democratic newspapers "Worker" and "Drugar" ("Comrade"). According to Rakovsky's own autobiography, this was the time when his hatred for Russian tsarism intensified. While still a student in Geneva, he traveled to Bulgaria, where he read a number of reports directed against the tsarist government.

In the fall of 1893, he entered medical school in Berlin, but due to close ties with the revolutionaries, he was expelled from Russia after only six months. In Germany, Rakovsky collaborated with Wilhelm Liebknecht on Vorwärts, the central organ of the German Social Democrats. In 1896 he graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Montpellier in France, where he received a doctorate in medicine.

From the autumn of 1898 he served in the Romanian army. Demobilized in the spring of 1899.

After the split of the RSDLP into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at the Second Congress in 1903, he took an intermediate position, trying to reconcile both groups on the basis of a consensus. Between 1903 and 1917, along with Maxim Gorky, Rakovsky was one of the links between the Bolsheviks, whom he sympathized with in terms of the economic program, and the Mensheviks, in whose activities he found positive political moments. In addition to the Russian revolutionaries, in Geneva, Rakovsky worked for some time together with Rosa Luxemburg.

After completing his studies in France, Rakovsky arrived in St. Petersburg to offer his services in coordinating the actions of workers' and Marxist circles in Russia and abroad, but was soon expelled from the country and left for Paris. In Petersburg, Rakovsky visited Milyukov and Struve. In 1900-1902 he again stayed in the Russian capital, and in 1902 he returned to France.

Although Rakovsky's revolutionary activities during this period affected most of the countries of Europe, his main efforts were directed towards organizing a socialist movement in the Balkans, primarily in Bulgaria and Romania. On this occasion, he founded in Geneva the left-wing Romanian newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat and a number of Bulgarian Marxist publications - Den, Rabotnik and Drugar (Comrade). In 1907-1914 he was a member of the MSB.

Returning to Romania, Rakovsky settled in Dobruja, where he worked as an ordinary doctor (in 1913 he hosted Leon Trotsky). In 1910, he was one of the initiators of the restoration, under the name of the Social Democratic Party of Romania, of the Socialist Party of Romania that existed until 1899, which actually ceased to exist after the “benevolent” left it, agreeing to a compromise with royal power. The SDPR actually became the basis for the creation in 1910 of the Balkan Social Democratic Federation, which united the socialist parties of Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania and Greece. The very fact of the existence of a united federation of leftist parties was a protest against the policy of aggression and distrust established in the Balkans as a result of the Balkan Wars. Christian Rakovsky, who was the first secretary of the BKF, at the same time continued to take an active part in the pan-European socialist movement, for which he was repeatedly expelled from Bulgaria, Germany, France and Russia.

World War I

During the First World War, Rakovsky, like some other socialists who initially took a centrist position in discussions about the methods of political struggle, supported the left wing of international social democracy, which condemned the imperialist nature of the war. Rakovsky, along with the leaders of the left socialists, was one of the organizers of the international anti-war Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915.

An agent of the Central Powers working to defeat Russia?

Already during Rakovsky's stay in St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 20th century, there were rumors about him that he was an Austrian agent.

The First World War itself was considered by a number of public and political figures as a struggle between progress and democracy (Germany) and reaction and autocracy (Russia), on the basis of which they staked on Russia's defeat in the war. These views were held in particular by Israel Gelfand (Alexander Parvus), who took practical steps to organize the military defeat of Russia. As a "specialist on the Balkans and Turkey", he arrived in Bucharest in January 1915, where Rakovsky led the local Social Democratic organization and edited the daily newspaper. The goals of Gelfand's visit to Romania were to change the Romanian policy to a pro-German one, in particular, the corresponding policy of the Romanian Social Democrats and the organization in Romania of a center for destabilizing the situation in Ukraine, the Caucasus and in the Black Sea ports of Russia - Odessa and Nikolaev. The subsequent development of events indicated that Rakovsky agreed with Helphand's plans for Russia and expressed his readiness to accept financial assistance from Helphand for the Romanian party. A message has been preserved from the representative of the German Foreign Ministry in Romania, von Busche-Haddenhausen, sent to Berlin three days after Gelfand's arrival in Bucharest, informing him that he had the opportunity "invisibly" to transfer 100,000 lei to the Romanian socialists for "anti-war propaganda". Consent from Berlin was obtained. True, later, at the party congress, Rakovsky reported that Gelfand was the only one who donated 300 lei to a socialist newspaper. At the same congress, Rakovsky called for a mass socialist demonstration for peace, and, as Boucher wrote, he was supported by "I and the Austro-Hungarian minister":157 .

Through Rakovsky, the Russian-language daily newspaper Nashe Slovo, published in Paris in 1914-1916, was financed. Martov and Trotsky, standing on anti-war positions. The newspaper was closed by the French authorities for anti-war propaganda. Trotsky himself later, while in New York, recalled that the money for the publication of the newspaper "was mainly from Rakovsky." According to D. F. Bradley, the Austrians were behind this. Historian Zbinek Zeman believed that Rakovsky got money from Gelfand - at the end of March 1915 he received the first million German marks for "peace propaganda" in Russia, some of which was transferred to Bucharest, where Gelfand himself arrived in early April for a meeting with von Bushe and Rakovsky. Helphand apparently succeeded in persuading Rakovsky to use part of this sum to help Trotsky's newspaper:178.

After Romania entered the war on the side of the Entente in August 1916, Rakovsky was arrested on charges of spreading defeatist sentiments and spying for Austria and Germany. He was imprisoned in Iasi until May 1, 1917, when he was released by the democratized Russian garrison. After the defeat of Romania in the war, Rakovsky appeared in neutral Stockholm and turned to the German representative in Sweden with a request to allow his wife to travel to Sweden through German territory. The already mentioned von Busche, who at that moment worked as the Deputy State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry, responded positively to Rakovsky's request, noting: "In the past, Rakovsky worked for us in Romania": 158 .

In 1917, the French General Nissel called Rakovsky in his report "a well-known Austro-Bulgarian agent."

Revolution in Russia

After being released from a Romanian prison, Rakovsky arrived in Russia. During the Kornilov days, Rakovsky was hidden by a Bolshevik organization at the Sestroretsk cartridge factory. From there he moved to Kronstadt. Then Rakovsky decided to go to Stockholm, where a conference of the Zimmerwalders was to be convened. In Stockholm, he was caught by the October Revolution. in November 1917 he joined the RSDLP (b), conducted party work in Odessa and Petrograd.

Civil War

Arriving in Russia in December 1917, at the beginning of January 1918 Rakovsky left to the south as an organizing commissioner of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, along with an expedition of sailors led by Zheleznyakov. After spending a certain time in Sevastopol and organizing there an expedition to the Danube against the Romanian authorities, who had already occupied Bessarabia, he set off with an expedition to Odessa. The “Supreme Autonomous Collegium for Combating Counter-Revolution in Romania and Ukraine” (the local analogue of the All-Russian Cheka) was organized here, and as the chairman of this collegium and a member of Rumcherod, Rakovsky remained in Odessa until the city was occupied by the Germans. From Odessa, Rakovsky came to Nikolaev, from there to the Crimea, then to Yekaterinoslav, where he participated in the Second Congress of Soviets of Ukraine, then to Poltava and Kharkov.

Diplomatic mission in Ukraine

After arriving in Moscow, where he stayed in general for no more than a month, in April 1918 Rakovsky went to Kursk with a delegation that was supposed to conduct peace negotiations with the Ukrainian Central Rada. In addition to Rakovsky, Stalin and Manuilsky were plenipotentiary delegates.

In Kursk, the delegates received a message about Skoropadsky's coup in Kyiv. A truce was concluded with the Germans, who continued their offensive. Skoropadsky's government invited the Bolshevik delegation to come to Kyiv. During the period of the Ukrainian State, he conducted secret negotiations in Kyiv with leaders of the Central Rada removed from power regarding the legalization of the Communist Party in Ukraine.

Diplomatic mission in Germany

He spoke equally well Romanian, Bulgarian, Russian, and several other European languages. And it is not known what language is native to him. I remember I asked him once - what language does he think in? Rakovsky thought for a moment and said: "Probably the one I'm speaking at the moment."

From the memoirs of the daughter of Adolf Ioffe

In September 1918, Rakovsky was sent on a diplomatic mission to Germany, but soon, together with the Soviet ambassador in Berlin, Joffe, Bukharin and other comrades, he was expelled from Germany. On the way from Germany, the Soviet delegation was overtaken by the news of the November Revolution in Berlin. Trying to return to Berlin, Rakovsky, along with others, was detained by the German military authorities in Kovno and sent to Smolensk.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

In a telegram to Moscow sent on January 10, 1919, members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) U Kviring, Fyodor Sergeev, Yakovlev (Epshtein) asked to "immediately send Khristian Georgievich" in order to prevent the crisis of the head of government from developing into a government crisis. From January 1919 to July 1923 Rakovsky was the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. At the same time, from January 1919 to May 1920, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, the NKVD paid "minimal attention." One of the organizers of Soviet power in Ukraine. From 1919 he was a member of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). In 1919-1920 he was a member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee. At the end of 1919, the entire territory of Ukraine was under the control of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, the Ukrainian People's Republic and Poland. Under these conditions, the All-Ukrainian Revolutionary Committee was created, which from December 17, 1919 to February 19, 1920 was the highest legislative and executive body of power in Ukraine, it was headed by G. I. Petrovsky. On February 19, 1920, after the liberation of most of Ukraine, the activities of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine resumed.

When at the beginning of 1922 the question arose about the possible transfer of Rakovsky to another job, the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine on March 23, 1922 decided to “categorically demand that Comrade Rakovsky not be removed from Ukraine.”

As part of the Soviet delegation, he participated in the work of the Genoa Conference (1922).

In June 1923, at the initiative of Rakovsky, a resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine was adopted, according to which foreign companies could open their branches in Ukraine only with the permission of its authorities. All commercial contracts concluded in Moscow were annulled. A month later, this decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine was canceled.

XII Congress of the RCP(b)

At the 12th Congress of the RCP(b) he resolutely opposed Stalin's national policy. At this congress, Rakovsky declared that "nine-tenths of their rights must be taken away from the Union Commissariats and transferred to the national republics." In June 1923, at the IV meeting of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) with senior officials of the national republics and regions, Stalin accused Rakovsky and his associates of confederalism, national deviationism and separatism. A month after the end of this meeting, Rakovsky was removed from the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine and sent as ambassador to England (1923-1925). On July 18, Rakovsky sent a letter to Stalin and in copies to all members of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of the RCP (b), members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, in which he indicated: “My appointment to London is for me, and not only for me alone, only a pretext for my dismissal from work in Ukraine. At this time, a scandal broke out connected with the “Zinoviev letter”. From October 1925 to October 1927 - plenipotentiary in France.

Interestingly, Rakovsky was worried about the poet Sergei Yesenin. So, in a letter from Kh. G. Rakovsky to F. E. Dzerzhinsky dated October 25, 1925, Rakovsky asks “to save the life of the famous poet Yesenin, undoubtedly the most talented in our Union”, offering: “Invite him to your place, make it good and send it together with him to the sanatorium of a comrade from the GPU, who would not let him get drunk ... ". On the letter is Dzerzhinsky’s resolution, addressed to his close friend, secretary, head of the GPU V. D. Gerson: “M. b., can you do it? Next to it is Gerson's note: "I called repeatedly - I could not find Yesenin." (Yesenin committed suicide on 12/25/1925).

Left opposition in the RCP(b) and the CPSU(b)

Since 1923, he belonged to the Left Opposition, was one of its ideologists. In 1927, he was removed from all positions, expelled from the Central Committee, and at the XV Congress of the CPSU (b) was expelled from the party among 75 "active opposition figures." By a special meeting at the OGPU, he was sentenced to 4 years of exile and exiled to Kustanai, and in 1931 he was again sentenced to 4 years of exile and exiled to Barnaul. For a long time he had a negative attitude towards the "capitulators" who returned to the party to continue the struggle, but in 1935, together with another stubborn oppositionist, L. S. Sosnovsky, he announced his break with the opposition. N. A. Ioffe wrote about this: “He believed that there is undoubtedly a certain stratum in the party that shares our views in the soul, but does not dare to express them. And we could become some kind of sane core and do something. And one by one, he said, they will pass us over like chickens. The daughter of A.K. Voronsky, Galina Voronskaya, recalled that in 1929, at a meeting with Stalin, her father “tried to stand up for Rakovsky, who was then an opposition figure in exile in Astrakhan:“ It is too great a luxury for the party to keep such highly educated people in the provinces. ". He was returned to Moscow and in November 1935 he was reinstated in the CPSU (b).

In 1934, he was sheltered in a managerial position in the People's Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR by G. N. Kaminsky.

Third Moscow Trial

In 1936 he was again expelled from the party. On January 27, 1937, he was arrested on a special report by N. I. Yezhov to I. V. Stalin.

He was kept in the inner prison of the NKVD; for several months he refused to plead guilty to the crimes he was accused of; but in the end he was broken and in March 1938 he appeared as a defendant in the trial of the "Anti-Soviet Right-Trotsky Bloc". Pleaded guilty to participating in various conspiracies, as well as being a Japanese and English spy. On March 13, 1938, he was among the three defendants (along with Bessonov and Pletnev), who were sentenced not to death, but to 20 years in prison with confiscation of property. In the last word, he said: “Our misfortune is that we occupied responsible positions, the power turned our heads. This passion, this ambition for power has blinded us.”

Regarding Rakovsky's behavior at the trial, another oppositionist, Victor Serge, wrote: "He seemed to deliberately compromise the process with testimony, the falsity of which is obvious to Europe ...". Another explanation is offered by the USSR Supreme Court in its Decree of February 4, 1988: "Self-incrimination was achieved through deception, blackmail, mental and physical violence."

Execution

He served his sentence in the Oryol Central. After the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, Rakovsky, like Bessonov and Pletnev, who were convicted with him, was shot in the Medvedev Forest according to Stalin's lists on September 11, 1941.

Rehabilitation

On February 4, 1988, he was rehabilitated by the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR and on June 21, 1988, by the decision of the CPC under the Central Committee of the CPSU, he was reinstated in the party.

It all happened in the same savage 1937. Beaten half to death and sadistically mutilated, the man asked the investigator for a pencil and in an unexpectedly firm voice said:

— Did you ask for a confession? Now they will. I will write...

— It would have been like that for a long time,” the investigator chuckled. “But remember: “I am not guilty of anything” does not work with us. So write the truth.

— Yes, yes, I will write the truth.

Surprisingly, this clumsily scrawled note has been preserved, it is filed into the file and, I am not afraid of this word, literally screams.

“Until now, I only asked for pardon, but did not write about the case. Now I will write a statement demanding a review of my case, with a description of all the "secrets of the Madrid court." Let at least the people through whose hands all sorts of statements pass know how bad deeds and trials are “cooked” out of personal political revenge. Let me die soon, let me be a corpse... Someday the corpses will speak.”

This "someday" has come. And even though the author of these lines, Khristian Rakovsky, cannot speak, numerous documents, memoirs of friends and, most importantly, his deeds will tell about him.

Being a fighter, defender and revolutionary Krystyo (this is his real, Bulgarian name) Rakovsky doomed, so to speak, the fact of birth. One of his relatives, Georgy Mamarchev, fought the Turks until the end of his days, another, Georgy Rakovsky, became a national hero on the same grounds. Things went so far that even as a teenager, Christian officially renounced his surname Stanchev and became Rakovsky.

Such a surname obliged a lot, and Christian begins to act. At the age of 14, he causes a riot in the gymnasium, for which he is immediately kicked out into the street. Christian moved to Gabrovo and began to muddy the waters among the local high school students, declaring himself a consistent socialist. This time he was thrown out not only from the gymnasium, but also from the country, depriving him of the right to continue his education in Bulgaria.

The young socialist had to move to Geneva and take an exam at the medical faculty of the university. But even as a student, Christian spent all his time not so much in laboratories and anatomists, but in underground editorial offices and inconspicuous cafes, where the whole color of the rebellious European emigration gathered. It was there that Christian met Georgy Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, Karl Kautsky, Jean Jaurès, and even Friedrich Engels. Then he began to cooperate in Iskra, and from the very first issue.

Rakovsky first came to Russia in 1897. Then he was 24 years old, and he went to Moscow not so much to the international congress of doctors as ... to get married. His chosen one was Elizaveta Ryabova, the daughter of an artist of the imperial theaters. Their marriage was happy, but short-lived: five years later, Elizabeth died during childbirth.

Then came 1905, the year of the first Russian revolution. Armed uprisings swept across the country, and all of them were brutally suppressed - all but one. As the newspapers wrote in those years: “The battleship Potemkin was and remains the undefeated territory of the revolution.” As you probably remember, it all started with borscht made from wormy meat, then the massacre of the most hated officers, entry into Odessa, the funeral of the deceased leader of the uprising, a breakthrough through the squadron that arrived from Sevastopol and forced mooring in Romanian Constanta.

If the Romanian authorities had handed over the sailors to the tsarist authorities, they would certainly have been shot. It would probably have been so, if not for Rakovsky. He organized rallies in defense of the sailors, publishing incendiary articles, raised the whole of progressive Europe to its feet, brought thousands of demonstrators to the streets - and the Romanian authorities surrendered: they allowed 700 sailors to go ashore, and the battleship was returned to Russia. Somewhat later, Rakovsky wrote a book about the events associated with Potemkin: it was this book that formed the basis of the script for Eisenstein's world-famous film.

During these same years, an event occurred that played a fatal role in his fate: Rakovsky met and became close friends with Trotsky. They became such bosom friends that they dedicated books to each other. On the title page of one of them, Trotsky, in particular, wrote: "To Christian Georgievich Rakovsky, a fighter, a man, a friend, I dedicate this book." And at the height of the First World War, after one of the meetings in Switzerland, Trotsky devoted an entire article to his old friend.

“Rakovsky is one of the most 'international' figures in the European movement. A Bulgarian by origin, but a Romanian subject, a French doctor by education, but a Russian intellectual in terms of connections, sympathies and literary work, Rakovsky speaks all the Balkan languages ​​and three European ones, actively participates in the internal life of four socialist parties - Bulgarian, Russian, French and Romanian " , he wrote in the Bernese Guard newspaper.

Somewhat later, in 1922, when Trotsky was at the height of his power and popularity, he said in one of his speeches:

— Historical fate wanted Rakovsky, a Bulgarian by birth, French and Russian by general political education, a Romanian citizen by passport, to be the head of government in Soviet Ukraine.

Yes, yes, don’t be surprised, in 1917 Rakovsky finally moved to Russia, became a Bolshevik, commissar of the detachment of the famous sailor Zheleznyakov, the same Zheleznyakov who practically dispersed the Constituent Assembly, and then fought against Denikin’s forces and was mortally wounded when leaving the encirclement.

And Rakovsky almost became a diplomat at the end 1918- go. The fact is that just at that time the so-called November Revolution took place in Germany and the Congress of Soviets of Germany was announced. Lenin immediately decided to send a delegation to the congress, which included Rakovsky. It so happened that the delegation was intercepted by officers loyal to the Kaiser, and Lenin's envoys were almost shot. When the German revolution was over, Rakovsky was appointed plenipotentiary to Vienna. The Austrian authorities gave agrement, but the Germans refused to let him through their territory - and he did not reach Vienna. *

Since the Civil War was in full swing, Rakovsky, as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council, was thrown either to the Southern or to the Southwestern Front, where he fought hand in hand with Mikhail Frunze and the future Marshal of the Soviet Union Alexander Yegorov. And Rakovsky became the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine in January 1919- and remained in this post until 1923. But back in 1922, he was included in the delegation that went to the Genoa Conference. Shortly after its completion, Rakovsky was appointed Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and immediately sent to London as half representative.

Relations with England were then very bad. One of the main problems that prevented the establishment of mutually beneficial relations was the debts of tsarist Russia. At first, the Soviet government refused to recognize these debts: the working class, they say, did not take any money from the English bourgeoisie, and as for nationalized property, all these factories and factories were built by the hands of Russian workers and rightfully belong to the people, and not to British shareholders . Then London made it clear that there could be no question of any de jure recognition of the USSR. The Soviet Union will become a pariah country with which no one will trade or maintain diplomatic relations.

It was at this moment that Christian Rakovsky appeared in London. This is how the newspapers of that time described his first "appearance":

“Having entered the hall, Rakovsky riveted the views of the whole society to himself. He was a truly charming man, evoking sympathy for his manners and noble posture. He was immediately surrounded by writers, journalists, people of science, art, politicians, diplomats. With each he spoke in the appropriate language - English, French, German or Romanian. He answered questions with ease, when - diplomatically, when - with restraint, when - with some irony. The audience expected to see an uncouth Bolshevik, and Rakovsky impressed everyone with his erudition, grace, nobility, education and high culture.

The first “appearance” was followed by a second, a third, then heart-to-heart conversations with politicians, bankers and entrepreneurs. As a result, the debt problem was settled, and the Soviet Union was recognized de jure. It was a victory, a great victory for the young Soviet diplomacy! Izvestia immediately noted the merits of Rakovsky. Why is there "Izvestia", the English historian Carr, and he could not resist, calling Rakovsky "the best diplomat 1920s".

When it became clear that relations with England went smoothly, the turn came to France. It was clear to everyone that no one but Rakovsky could solve the problem of relations with France, and in October 1925 he was transferred to Paris. He spent two years in France, during which time Marcel Cachin, Louis Aragon, Henri Barbusse, Elsa Triolet, Georges Sadoul, Ernest Hemingway and many other world-famous cultural figures became his close friends. As for politicians, Rakovsky found a common language with them too: in any case, all the problems of mutual relations between Moscow and Paris were settled.

In 1927, Khristian Georgievich returned to Moscow and immediately got involved in a discussion related to criticism of Stalin's methods of leadership of the country and the party. He speaks at rallies, meetings, and even at the 15th Party Congress, arguing that "only a regime of inner-party democracy can ensure the development of the correct line of the party and strengthen its ties with the working class." He was immediately labeled an "internal party oppositionist", expelled from the party and exiled to Astrakhan.

Five years of silence, five years of forced idleness, and finally, in 1934, Rakovsky decided to repent: he sent a letter to the Central Committee in which he stated that he “recognizes the general line of the party and is ready to give all his strength to defend the Soviet Union.” Oddly enough, the letter was published in Izvestia - and soon Rakovsky was reinstated in the party and even appointed chairman of the All-Union Red Cross, we can say that by specialty: he is a doctor by education. For some time he was restricted to travel abroad, but after a couple of years, Khristian Georgievich, at the head of an official delegation, visited Japan.

Rakovsky was not allowed to take part in diplomatic affairs, so he was in complete bewilderment. “Where is the People’s Commissariat of Health — and where is Japan? Why am I going there, and not the people's commissar? he thought.

This became clear quite quickly, in the same House of Unions, where the trial of the right-wing Trotskyist bloc was taking place, in which, besides Bukharin, Rykov and many others, Christian Rakovsky was an active participant. Then he was declared an English spy because he was the plenipotentiary in London, and a Japanese spy because he went there with a delegation. One would like to ask: was it not on purpose, or was he sent to Japan in order to then sew up a charge of espionage?

There is no need to talk about accusations of Trotskyism: Trotsky's laudatory and enthusiastic articles about "a friend, a man and a fighter" were on everyone's lips.

The investigation went on for eight months, Rakovsky did not plead guilty for eight months, and then he asked for a pencil and scribbled the very note in which he demanded a review of his case and promised to tell how bad deeds were “cooked” ... Apparently, after that he fell into the hands of shoulder masters: he was unrecognizable at the trial. But here's what struck me the most: in the last word, Rakovsky pleaded guilty to literally everything. And he ended his speech rather cryptically.

— I consider it my duty, he said, to help with my confession the struggle against fascism.

What does fascism have to do with it? How can his confession help this fight?

How can Hitler be harmed by his repentant statement that he was an Anglo-Japanese spy and sought to overthrow the existing system in the USSR? It is impossible to understand this... The only more or less reasonable explanation is the promise of a milder sentence. And so it happened, by the way. Rakovsky was given not a “tower”, but 20 years in prison, having been thrown into the notorious Oryol Central.

Already in the first months of World War II, the question arose of what to do with the prisoners who were in the Oryol Central: the Germans were getting closer and, what’s good, they could release them. Beria proposed a radical solution, and Stalin supported him: to transfer the criminals to the Ural and Siberian camps - a little later they would become excellent material for the penal battalions, and to shoot the political ones.

To keep the formality, on September 8, the cases of the political ones in absentia, by list, were reviewed, all of them were sentenced to death, and on October 3 the sentence was carried out. One of the first to receive the executioner's bullet was Christian Georgievich Rakovsky, the same Rakovsky who was the author of the first victories of Soviet diplomacy and was considered the best diplomat of the 1920s in European capitals.

Boris Sopelnyak

From the book "Secret Archives of the NKVD-KGB"

To speak of Rakovsky as a diplomat means, forgive the diplomats, to belittle Rakovsky. Diplomatic activity occupied a very small and completely subordinate place in the life of a fighter. Rakovsky was a writer, orator, organizer, then administrator. He was a soldier, one of the main builders of the Red Army. Only in this series is his activity as a diplomat. He was least of all a man of the diplomatic profession. He did not start out as an embassy secretary or consul. He has not sniffed in the salons for many years to those ruling circles that do not always smell good. He entered diplomacy as an ambassador of the revolution, and I do not think that any of his diplomatic counterparts had the slightest reason to feel their diplomatic superiority over this revolutionary who invaded their holy of holies.

If we talk about the profession in the bourgeois sense of the word, then Rakovsky was a doctor. He would undoubtedly have become a first-class physician due to his observation and insight, ability to creative combinations, perseverance and honesty of his thought and indefatigability of his will. But another, higher profession in his eyes tore him away from medicine: the profession of a political fighter.

He entered diplomacy as a ready man and a ready diplomat, not only because, even in his youth, he knew how to wear a tuxedo and a top hat on occasion, but above all because he very well understood people for whom a tuxedo and a top hat are industrial clothes.

I don't know if he ever read the special textbooks on which young diplomats are brought up. But he perfectly knew the new history of Europe, the biographies and memoirs of its politicians and diplomats, psychological resourcefulness easily told him what the books were silent about, and Rakovsky, therefore, found no reason to be lost or amazed at those people who darn the holes of old Europe. .

Rakovsky had, however, a quality that seemed to predispose him to diplomatic activity: courtesy. She was not a product of salon education and was not a smiling mask of contempt and indifference to people. Since diplomacy is still recruited mainly from rather closed castes, because the refined politeness that has become proverbial is only an emanation of arrogance. How quickly, however, this high training, even if passed down from generation to generation, slips, exposing the features of fear and anger, the years of war and revolution let us see this. There is another kind of contemptuous attitude towards people, resulting from too deep a psychological penetration into their real driving motives. Psychological insight without creative will is almost inevitably stained with a touch of cynicism and misanthropy.

These feelings were completely alien to Rakovsky. In his nature was laid a source of inexhaustible optimism, a keen interest in people and sympathy for them. His benevolence towards man was all the more stable in personal relationships, the more charming because he remained free from illusions and did not need them at all.

The moral center of gravity is so happily located in this person that he, never ceasing to be himself, feels equally confident (or at least behaves) in the most diverse conditions and social groups. From the working-class neighborhoods of Bucharest to St. James Palace in London.

- You introduced yourself, they say, to the British king? I asked Rakovsky on one of his visits to Moscow.

His eyes sparkled with amusement.

- Appeared.

- Short pants?

- In short pants.

- Not in a wig?

No, no wig.

- Well, so what?

“Interesting,” he replied.

We looked at each other and laughed. But neither I had the desire to ask, nor he to tell what, in fact, was "interesting" in this not quite ordinary meeting of a revolutionary who was expelled nine times from different countries of Europe, and the emperor of India. Rakovsky put on the court costume in the same way as during the war the Red Army overcoat, as well as industrial clothes. But one can say without hesitation that of all the Soviet diplomats Rakovsky was the best at wearing the clothes of the ambassador and least of all allowed her to influence his "I".

I have never had the opportunity to observe Rakovsky in a diplomatic environment, but I have no difficulty imagining him, for he always remained himself and he did not need to put on a courtesy uniform in order to talk with a representative of another power.

Rakovsky was a man of refined moral nature, and it shone through all his thoughts and deeds. He had a sense of humor in the highest degree, but he was too friendly to living people to allow himself to turn it too often into caustic irony. But among friends and relatives, he loved the ironic way of thinking as well as the sentimental one. In an effort to remake the world and people, Rakovsky knew how to take them at every moment as they are. It was this combination that constituted one of the most important features in this figure, for the benevolent, gentle, organically delicate Rakovsky was one of the most inflexible revolutionaries that political history has created.

Rakovsky captivates with an open and benevolent approach to people, intelligent kindness, nobility of nature. This tireless fighter, in whom political courage is combined with courage, is completely alien to the field of intrigue. That is why, when the masses acted and decided, the name of Rakovsky thundered in the country, and Stalin was known only in the office. But precisely for the same reason, when the bureaucracy pushed the masses aside and silenced them, Stalin had to gain the upper hand over Rakovsky.

Rakovsky came to Bolshevism only in the era of the revolution. If, however, one traces the political orbit of Rakovsky, then there will be no doubt how organically and inevitably his own activity and his development led him to the path of Bolshevism.

Rakovsky is not a Romanian, but a Bulgarian, from that part of Dobruja, which, according to the Berlin Treaty, went to Romania. He studied at the Bulgarian gymnasium, was expelled from it for socialist propaganda, the university course was held in southern France and French Switzerland. In Geneva, Rakovsky fell into the Russian Social Democratic circle, which was led by Plekhanov and Zasulich. From that time on, he was closely associated with the Marxist Russian intelligentsia and fell under the influence of the founder of Russian Marxism, Plekhanov, through whom he soon became close to the founder of French Marxism, Jules Guesde, and took an active part in the French labor movement, on its left wing, among the gaudists.

A few years later, Rakovsky is actively working on the basis of Russian political literature under the pseudonym X. Insarova. For his connection with the Russians, Rakovsky was expelled from Berlin in 1894. After graduating from the university, he comes to Romania, to his official fatherland, with which nothing has connected him so far, and is serving his military service as a military doctor.

Zasulich told me in the old years (1903-1904) about the ardent sympathy that the young man Rakovsky aroused for himself, capable, inquisitive, ardent, implacable, always ready to rush into a new dump and did not count bruises. Political courage from a young age was combined in him with personal courage. In maneuver warfare, the combat commander is gaining "movement for a shot." Both external conditions and personal insatiable interest in countries and peoples threw him from state to state, and in these constant moves, the persecution of the European police was not the last place.

The emigrant Plekhanov was an implacable Marxist, but he remained too long in the field of pure theory not to lose touch with the proletariat and the revolution. Under the influence of Plekhanov, Rakovsky in the years between the two revolutions (1905-1917), however, stood closer to the Mensheviks than to the Bolsheviks. How far, however, he was in his own political activity far from the opportunism of the Mensheviks, is shown by the mere fact that the Rumanian Socialist Party, led by Rakovsky, already in 1915 came out of the Second International. When the question arose of joining the Third International, only the organizations of Transylvania and Bukovina, which previously belonged to the opportunist Austrian and Hungarian parties, offered resistance. Nevertheless, the organizations of old Romania and the Bulgarian quadrangle (quaddilater) that had ceded to it since 1913 almost unanimously spoke in favor of joining the Communist International.

The leader of the opportunist part of the party, the former Austrian deputy Grigorovichi, declared in the Romanian Senate that he remained a social democrat and that he was not in solidarity with Lenin and Trotsky, who had become anti-Marxists.

Rakovsky is one of the most international figures of recent political history both in terms of upbringing, activities, and, most importantly, in terms of psychological make-up. Here is what I wrote about him in the book Years of the Great Turning Point, 1919, p. 61]:

“In the person of Rakovsky, I met an old acquaintance. Christia Rakovsky is one of the most "international" figures in the European movement. A Bulgarian by origin, but a Romanian subject, a French doctor by education, but a Russian intellectual in terms of connections, sympathies and literary work (with the signature of X. Insarov, he published a number of journal articles in Russian and a book about the third republic), Rakovsky knows all the Balkan languages ​​and three European, actively participated in the internal life of four socialist parties - Bulgarian, Russian, French and Romanian - and now stands at the head of the latter ... "

Rakovsky was expelled from tsarist Russia, built the Romanian Socialist Party, was expelled from Romania as a foreigner, although he had previously served in the Romanian army as a military doctor, returned to Romania again, put a daily newspaper in Bucharest and led the Romanian Socialist Party, fought against interference Romania into the war and was arrested on the eve of her intervention. In 1917, the Socialist Party of Romania, which he had brought up, completely joined the Communist International.

On May 1, 1917, Russian troops freed Rakovsky from prison in Iasi, where, in all likelihood, the fate of Karl Liebknecht awaited him. And an hour later Rakovsky was already speaking at a rally of 20,000 people. In a special train he was taken to Odessa. From that moment on, Rakovsky went entirely into the Russian revolution. The arena of his activity is Ukraine.

That Rakovsky personally came to Lenin as a grateful student, alien to the slightest shadow of vanity and jealousy in relation to the teacher, despite the age difference of only four years, there can be no slightest doubt about this for someone who is familiar with the activities and personality of Rakovsky . Now in the Soviet Union ideas are judged solely in the light of birth and smallpox records, as if there were a common ideological route for all. The Bulgarian, Romanian and Frenchman Rakovsky did not fall under the influence of Lenin in his younger years, when Lenin was still only the leader of the extreme left wing of the democratic proletarian movement in Russia. Rakovsky came to Lenin as a mature man of forty-four, with many scars from international battles, at a time when Lenin had risen to the role of an international figure. We know that Lenin met no small resistance within the ranks of his own party when, at the beginning of 1917, he replaced the national-democratic tasks of the revolution with international socialist ones.

But even having joined the new platform, many of the old Bolsheviks, in essence, remained all roots in the past, as the current epigonism undeniably testifies. On the contrary, if Rakovsky did not assimilate the national logic of the development of Bolshevism for a long time, then he perceived Bolshevism in its expanded form the more deeply, and the very past of Bolshevism was illuminated for him by a different light. The Bolsheviks of the provincial type, after the death of the teacher, pulled Bolshevism back towards national narrow-mindedness. Rakovsky, on the other hand, remained in the rut that had been laid by the October Revolution. The future historian, in any case, will say that the ideas of Bolshevism developed through the disgraced group to which Rakovsky belonged.

In early 1918, the Soviet Republic sent Rakovsky as its representative to negotiate with his former fatherland, Romania, for the evacuation of Bessarabia. On March 9, Rakovsky signed an agreement with General Averescu, his former military commander.

In April 1918, a delegation consisting of Stalin, Rakovsky and Manuilsky was created for peace negotiations with the Rada. At that time no one could have imagined that Stalin would overthrow Rakovsky with the help of Manuilsky.

From May to October, Rakovsky negotiated with Skoropadsky, the Ukrainian hetman by the grace of Wilhelm II.

Either as a diplomat, or as a soldier, he fights for Soviet Ukraine against the Ukrainian Rada, Hetman Skoropadsky, Denikin, the occupation troops of the Entente and against Wrangel. As Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine, he directs the entire policy of this country with a population of 30 million souls. As a member of the Central Committee of the Party, he participates in the leading work of the entire Union. At the same time, Rakovsky takes the most intimate part in the creation of the Communist International. There was, perhaps, no one in the leading core of the Bolsheviks who, from his own observation, knew so well the pre-war European labor movement and its leaders, especially in the Romanesque and Slavic countries.

At the first meeting of the International Congress, Lenin, as chairman, when discussing the list of speakers, announced that Rakovsky had already left the Ukraine and should arrive tomorrow: it was taken for granted that Rakovsky would be among the main speakers. Indeed, he delivered a report on behalf of the Balkan Revolutionary Federation, created in 1915, at the beginning of the war, as part of the Romanian, Serbian, Greek and Bulgarian parties.

Rakovsky accused the Italian socialists of the fact that although they talked about the revolution, they actually poisoned the proletariat, portraying the proletarian revolution "as a wedding in which there can be no place for terror, hunger, or war."

Rakovsky was protected from bureaucracy. He was alien to that naive overestimation of political specialists, which usually goes hand in hand with a skeptical mistrust of the masses. Accusing the Italian socialists at the Third Congress of the Comintern of not daring to break with Turati's right deviation, Rakovsky gave an apt explanation of this indecisiveness: whitewash him? Because the Italian comrades from the Socialist Party place all their hope not in the working class, but in the intellectual aristocracy of specialists.”

Rakovsky is alien to the naive deification of the masses. He knows from the experience of his own activity that there are whole epochs when the masses are powerless, as if chained by a heavy sleep. But he also knows that nothing great in history has been accomplished without the masses, and that no specialists in parliamentary cuisine can replace them. Rakovsky learned, especially in Lenin's school, to understand the role of far-sighted and firm leadership. But he was clearly aware of the service role of all specialists and of the need for a merciless break with such "specialists" who are trying to replace the masses and thus lower their own confidence in themselves. This concept is the source of Rakovsky's irreconcilable hostility to bureaucracy in the labor movement and, consequently, to Stalinism, which is the quintessence of bureaucracy.

As Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine and a member of the Politburo of the Ukrainian Party, Rakovsky entered into all issues of Ukrainian life, concentrating leadership in his hands. In the diaries of the Lenin Secretariat, there are permanent records of telegraphic and telephone communications between Lenin and Rakovsky on a wide variety of issues: military affairs, the development of census materials, the Ukrainian import program, national politics, diplomacy, and Comintern issues.

I met with Rakovsky during the detours of the front.

By position, Rakovsky was People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs: the full unification of Soviet diplomacy was carried out only later. We were in no hurry with centralization, because it was not known how international relations would develop, and whether it would be more profitable for Ukraine not yet to formally link its fate with the fate of Great Russia. This caution was also necessary in relation to the still fresh Ukrainian nationalism, which, through experience, had yet to come to the need for a federation with Great Russia.

As Ukrainian People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Rakovsky did not skimp on protest notes, which he sent to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the peace conference of the governments of France, Great Britain and Italy, and everyone, everyone, everyone. In these extensive propaganda documents, it is clarified in detail how the military forces of the Entente wage war in Ukraine without declaring war, carry out gendarmerie functions, pursuing communists, help White Guard gangs, and, finally, piracy, capturing Ukrainian ships on the spot (March, July, September, October 1919 of the year).

Rakovsky characterizes the exploits performed by the Whites under the auspices of the French command in the war zone of the allied forces as "horrors reminiscent of the darkest era of the conquest of Algeria and the Hunnic methods of the Balkan war."

In the radio of September 25, 1919, sent to Paris, London and everyone, everyone, everyone ... Rakovsky paints in great detail, listing places, persons and circumstances, a picture of Jewish pogroms perpetrated by Russian and Ukrainian White Guards, allies and agents of the Entente. Rakovsky's struggle against the pogrom anti-Semitism of the counter-revolution gave rise to counting him among the Jews: the white press did not write about him otherwise, as about the "Jew Rakovsky."

Much more important, however, was the behind-the-scenes diplomatic initiative that Rakovsky showed, often prodding Moscow. When archival documents are published, they will tell a lot of interesting things about this. But the main attention of Rakovsky in the early years was devoted to the military question and food.

Of course, during this first period of complete state independence of Ukraine, the necessary connection was provided through the party line. As a member of the Central Committee, Rakovsky carried out, of course, the decisions of the Central Committee. It must be borne in mind, however, that in those early years there was still no talk of the Party's tutelage over the entire work of the Soviets, more precisely, of the replacement of the Soviets by the Party. To this we must add that the lack of experience meant the absence of a routine. The Soviets lived a full life, improvisation played a big role.

Rakovsky was the true inspirer and leader of Soviet Ukraine in those years. It was not an easy task.

Ukraine, which went through a dozen regimes in two years, intersected in various ways with a rapidly growing national movement, became a hornet's nest for Soviet politics. “After all, this is a new country, a different country,” Lenin said, “and our Russians do not see this.” But Rakovsky, with his experience in the Balkan national movements, with his attention to facts and living people, quickly mastered the Ukrainian situation, differentiated in national groupings, attracted the most resolute and active wing to the side of Bolshevism. “This victory is worth a couple of good battles,” Lenin said at the 9th Party Congress in March 1920. To the “Rusotyaps” who tried to grumble against Rakovsky’s compliance, Lenin pointed out that “thanks to the correct policy of the Central Committee, superbly carried out by Comrade Rakovsky” in Ukraine, "instead of an uprising, which was inevitable", an expansion and consolidation of the political base was achieved.

Rakovsky 's policy in the countryside was distinguished by the same foresight and flexibility . Given the greater weakness of the proletariat, the social contradictions within the peasantry were much deeper in the Ukraine than in Great Russia. For the Soviet authorities, this meant double difficulties. Rakovsky managed to politically separate the peasant poor and unite them into "committees of impossible villagers", turning them into the most important pillar of Soviet power in the countryside. In 1924-1925, when Moscow took a firm course towards the prosperous tops of the countryside, Rakovsky defended the committees of the rural poor for Ukraine.

For better or worse, Rakovsky is explained in all European languages, including the Balkans with Turkey in Europe. “A European and a real European,” Lenin said more than once with taste, mentally contrasting Rakovsky with the widespread type of provincial Bolshevik, of which Stalin is the most prominent and complete representative. While Rakovsky, a genuine citizen of the civilized world, feels at home in every country, Stalin more than once took it to his credit that he had never been in exile. The closest and most reliable associates of Stalin are people who did not live in Europe, do not know foreign languages ​​and, in fact, are very little interested in everything that happens outside the borders of the state. Always, even in the old days of friendly work, Stalin's attitude towards Rakovsky was colored by the envious hostility of a provincial to a real European.

The linguistic economy of Rakovsky was nevertheless extensive. He knew too many languages ​​to know them flawlessly. He spoke and wrote Russian fluently, but with great errors in syntax. He spoke French better, at least from the formal side. He edited a Romanian newspaper, was a favorite orator of the Romanian workers, spoke Romanian with his wife, but still did not speak the language perfectly. He parted from Bulgaria too early and returned to it too rarely afterwards for his mother's language to become the language of his thought. He spoke German and Italian weakest of all. In English, he made great progress, already working in the diplomatic field.

At Russian meetings, he repeatedly asked the audience to condescendingly remember that the Bulgarian language has only four cases. At the same time, he referred to Empress Catherine, who was also at odds with cases. There were many jokes in the party connected with Rakovsky's Bulgarianisms. Manuilsky, the present leader of the Comintern, and Boguslavsky imitated Rakovsky's pronunciation with great success, and thereby gave him considerable pleasure.

When Rakovsky came from Kharkov to Moscow, the spoken language at our table in the Kremlin was because of Rakovsky's wife, a Romanian, French, which Rakovsky spoke better than all of us. He easily and imperceptibly tossed the right word to those who lacked it, and cheerfully and gently imitated those who got confused in subjunctives and syntax. Dinners with the participation of Rakovsky were true holidays, even in completely non-holiday conditions.

While my wife and I lived very closed, Rakovsky, on the contrary, met a lot of people, was interested in everyone, listened to everyone, remembered everything. He spoke about the most notorious and malicious opponents with a smile, with a joke, with a touch of humanity. The inflexibility of a revolutionary happily combined in him with tireless moral optimism.

Our dinners, usually very simple, became somewhat more complicated with the arrival of Rakovsky. After a lucky Sunday, I flaunted game or fish. Several times I took Rakovsky with me to hunt. He traveled out of friendship and love of nature; the hunt itself did not capture him. He did not kill anything, but he got tired well and talked animatedly with the peasant hunters and fishermen. Sometimes we caught fish with nets, "boating", that is, frightening the water with long poles with tin cones at the ends. We once spent the whole night behind this work, boiled fish soup, fell asleep for a short time by the fire, again “bobbed” and returned in the morning with a large basket of crucian carp, tired and rested, bitten by mosquitoes and satisfied.

Sometimes Rakovsky, as a former doctor, would expound on dietary considerations over dinner, most often in the form of a critique of my supposedly too strict dietary regimen. I defended myself, referring to the authority of doctors, primarily Fyodor Aleksandrovich Getye, who enjoyed our general recognition. "J" ai mes regies a moi, ”Rakovsky answered and immediately improvised them. The next time someone, most often one of our sons, convicted him of violating his own rules. “You cannot be a slave of your own rules,” he retorted, “one must be able to apply them.” And Rakovsky solemnly referred to dialectics.

The work of the Bolsheviks was more than once compared with the work of Peter the Great, who drove Russia with a club into the gates of civilization. The presence of similar features is explained by the fact that in both cases the instrument for moving forward was the state power, which did not stop at extreme measures of coercion. But the distance of two centuries and the unprecedented depth of the Bolshevik revolution push the features of similarity far back before the features of difference. Quite superficial and downright false are Lenin's personal psychological comparisons with Peter. The first Russian emperor stood in front of European culture with his head up and his mouth open. The frightened barbarian fought against barbarism. Lenin, however, not only intellectually stood on the tower of world culture, but also psychologically absorbed it into himself, subordinating it to the goals towards which all mankind is still advancing. There is no doubt, however, that next to Lenin in the front rank of Bolshevism stood the most diverse psychological types, including those of the make-up of the leaders of the Petrine era, that is, barbarians who rebelled against barbarism. For the October Revolution, a link in the chain of world development, at the same time resolved extremely backward tasks in the development of the peoples of Russia, without the slightest intention of saying anything derogatory, with the sole purpose, not political, but objective historical.

It can be said that Stalin most fully expressed the "Petrine", the most primitive trend in Bolshevism. When Lenin spoke of Rakovsky as "a true European," he was bringing forth a side of Rakovsky that so many other Bolsheviks lacked.

"A real European" did not mean, however, a culture treger generously bending down towards the barbarians: there was never a trace of this in Rakovsky. There is nothing more disgusting than the colonial Quaker-philanthropic arrogance and hypocrisy that appears not only under the religious or Freemasonic, but also under the socialist personality. Rakovsky organically rose from the primitiveness of the Balkan outback to the world outlook. In addition, a Marxist to the marrow of his bones, he took the whole of today's culture in its connections, transitions, tangles and contradictions. He could not oppose the world of "civilization" to the world of "barbarism". He explained too well the layers of barbarism at the heights of the current official civilization to oppose culture and barbarism to each other, like two closed spheres. Finally, a man who internally realized the latest achievements of thought, he psychologically was and remained completely alien to that arrogance that is characteristic of civilized barbarians in relation to the nameless and deprived builders of culture. And at the same time, he did not completely dissolve either in the environment or in his own work, he remained himself, not an awakened barbarian, but a “real European”. If the masses in him felt their own, then the semi-educated and semi-cultured leaders of the bureaucratic cast treated him with envious semi-hostility, as an intellectual "aristocrat". Such is the psychological background of the struggle against Rakovsky and Stalin's special hatred of him.

In the summer of 1923, Kamenev, then Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, together with Dzerzhinsky and Stalin, at a free evening hour at Stalin's dacha, on the balcony of a village house, over a glass of tea or wine, talked on sentimental and philosophical topics, generally speaking, little common among the Bolsheviks. Everyone spoke about their tastes and preferences. “The best thing in life,” Stalin said, “is to take revenge on the enemy: prepare a plan well, aim, strike and ... go to sleep.” Kamenev and Dzerzhinsky involuntarily looked at each other when they heard this confession. Death saved her from testing it in Dzerzhinsky's experience. Kamenev is now in exile, if I am not mistaken, in the very places where he was on the eve of the February Revolution together with Stalin. But the most burning and poisoned character is undoubtedly Stalin's hatred for Rakovsky. Doctors believe that Rakovsky's heart needs a rest in a warm climate? Let Rakovsky, who allows himself to criticize Stalin so convincingly, practice medicine beyond the Arctic Circle. This decision bears the personal stamp of Stalin. There can be no doubt here. At any rate, we now know that Rakovsky is not dead. But we also know that exile in the Yakutsk region means a death sentence for him. And Stalin knows this as well as we do.

In the political sky, Plutarch preferred twin stars. He connected his heroes by similarity or by contrast. This gave him the opportunity to better note individual traits. The plutarch of the Soviet revolution would hardly have found two other figures who, by the contrast of their features, would better illuminate each other than Stalin and Rakovsky. True, they are both southerners; one is from the multi-tribal Caucasus, the other is from the multi-tribal Balkans. Both are revolutionaries. Both, although at different times, became Bolsheviks. But these similar external frames of life only more clearly emphasize the opposite of the two human images.

In 1921, while visiting the Soviet Republic, the French socialist Morizet, now a senator, met Rakovsky in Moscow as an old acquaintance. "Raco, as we all called him, his old comrades ... knows all the socialists of France." Rakovsky bombarded his interlocutor with questions about old acquaintances and about all the corners of France. Speaking about his visit, Morise, mentioning Rakovsky, added: "His faithful lieutenant (adjutant) Manuilsky." Manuilsky's fidelity lasted, in any case, for two whole years, which is a considerable period, if we take into account the nature of the person.

Manuilsky was always an aide-de-camp with someone, but remained true only to his need to be with someone. When the conspiracy against the old leadership, led by the Troika (Stalin-Zinoviev-Kamenev), demanded an open political struggle against Rakovsky, who was especially popular and respected in the Ukraine, it was difficult to find anyone who would take the lead in cautious insinuations, to gradually raise them to condensed slander. The choice of the "troika", which knew the human inventory, settled on the "faithful lieutenant" Rakovsky, Manuilsky. He was given a choice: either to fall victim to his loyalty, or through treason to acquire his share in the conspiracy. There could be no doubt about Manuilsky's answer. A recognized master of political anecdote, he himself later told his friends colorfully about the ultimatum that forced him to become Zinoviev's lieutenant in 1923, so that by the end of 1925 he would turn into Stalin's lieutenant. So Manuilsky rose to a height that in the years of Lenin he could not even dream of even in a dream: now he is the official leader of the Comintern.

Part of the top Ukrainian bureaucracy had already been drawn into Stalin's conspiracy by this time. But in order to simplify and facilitate the further struggle, it turned out to be most convenient to tear Rakovsky away from the Ukrainian and Soviet soil in general, turning him into an ambassador. A favorable occasion was the Soviet-French conference. Rakovsky was appointed ambassador to France and chairman of the Russian delegation.

In October 1927, at the categorical demand of the French government, Rakovsky was removed from the post of ambassador and recalled, one might say, almost expelled from Paris to Moscow. And three months later he was already expelled from Moscow to Astrakhan. Both expulsions, paradoxically, were connected with Rakovsky's signature on the opposition document. The Parisian government found fault with the fact that the opposition's statement contained "unfriendly" notes addressed to foreign armies hostile to the Soviet Union. In fact, the right wing of the chamber did not want any connection with the Bolsheviks at all. And Rakovsky personally bothered Tardieu-Briand with his too large figure: they would have preferred a less impressive and less authoritative Soviet ambassador on the rue Grenelle. Knowing enough about the relationship between the Stalinists and the opposition, they apparently hoped that Moscow would help them get rid of Rakovsky. But the Stalinist group could not compromise itself with such courtesy towards the French reaction; besides, she did not want to have Rakovsky either in Moscow or in Kharkov. She thus found herself compelled, at the most inconvenient moment for herself, to take Rakovsky publicly under protection from the French government and the French press.

In an interview on September 16, Litvinov alluded, with good reason, to Rakovsky's sympathy for French culture and to the fact that de Monzy, head of the French delegation to the Soviet-French conference, publicly testified to Rakovsky's loyalty. “If the conference succeeded in resolving,” Litvinov said, “the most difficult issue of negotiations, namely, compensation for state debts ... then it is primarily due to this personally comrade. Rakovsky.

On October 5, Chicherin, then still people's commissar for foreign affairs, told the representatives of the French press in refutation of false rumors: “I never expressed any displeasure at the address of Ambassador Rakovsky; on the contrary, I have every reason to highly appreciate his work ... "

These words sounded all the more expressive because the Stalinist press, on the signal given from above, had already begun at that time to present the oppositionists as wreckers and underminers of the Soviet regime.

Finally, on October 12, this time in an official note to the French Ambassador Jean Erbett, Chicherin wrote:

"Both Mr. Litvinov and I wrote that the recall of Mr. Rakovsky, to whose efforts and energy the Franco-Soviet Conference is largely indebted for the results achieved, cannot but cause moral damage to the conference itself."

Nevertheless, yielding to the categorical demand of Briand, who cut off his own retreat and had to protect his reputation in the right-wing government, the Soviets were forced to recall Rakovsky.

Arriving in Moscow, Rakovsky immediately came under attack not by the French, but by the Soviet press, which prepared public opinion for the upcoming arrests and exiles of the oppositionists; and caring little about what was written yesterday, portrayed Rakovsky as an enemy of the Soviet regime.

In August of this year, Rakovsky turns 60 years old. For more than five years, Rakovsky spent in exile in Barnaul, in the Altai mountains, together with his wife, an inseparable companion. The harsh Altai winter with frosts reaching 45-50 degrees was unbearable for a southerner, a native of the Balkan Peninsula, especially for his tired heart. Rakovsky's friends - and his honest opponents were always friendly towards him - were fussing about his transfer to the south, to a milder climate. Despite a number of severe heart attacks of the exile, which became the source of rumors about his death, the Moscow authorities flatly refused to translate. When we speak of the Moscow authorities, this means Stalin, for if very big questions of economy and politics can and often pass by him, then where it comes to personal reprisal, revenge on the enemy, the decision always depends on Stalin personally.

Rakovsky remained in Barnaul, struggled with winter, waited for summer, and met winter again. Rumors about the death of Rakovsky have already arisen several times as the result of the intense anxiety of thousands and hundreds of thousands for the fate of a close and beloved person.

He tirelessly followed the Soviet economy and world life through the newspapers and books that reached him, wrote a large work on Saint-Simon and carried on extensive correspondence, less and less of which reached the destination.

Rakovsky follows the Soviet press every day about all the processes in the country, reads between the lines, proves the unsaid, exposes the economic roots of the difficulties, warns against impending dangers. In a number of remarkable works, where a broad generalization is based on rich factual material, Rakovsky from Astrakhan, then from Barnaul, imperiously interferes in Moscow's plans and measures. He strongly warns against exaggerated rates of industrialization.

In mid-1930, during months of extreme bureaucratic dizziness from ill-conceived successes, Rakovsky warned that forced industrialization would inevitably lead to a crisis. The impossibility of a further increase in labor productivity, the inevitability of disruption of the capital work plan, the acute shortage of agricultural raw materials, and finally, the deterioration of the food situation lead the far-sighted researcher to the conclusion: “The crisis of industry is already inevitable; in fact, industry has already entered into it.

Even earlier, in an official statement of October 4, 1929, Rakovsky strongly warned against "solid collectivization" that was not prepared either economically or culturally, and, in particular, "against emergency administrative measures in the countryside" that would inevitably entail severe political consequences. A year later, the hated and indefatigable adviser states: "The policy of complete collectivization and liquidation of the kulak has undermined the productive forces of agriculture and completed the sharp conflict with the countryside prepared by the entire previous policy." Rakovsky exposes Stalin's tradition of blaming "performers" for economic failures as an admission of his own inadequacy: "Responsibility for the quality of the apparatus lies with the leadership."

The old politician follows the processes in the party and in the working class with particular attention. Back in August 1928, from Astrakhan, the first place of his exile, he gives a deep and passionate analysis of the processes of degeneration in the ruling party. He focuses on the exfoliation of the bureaucracy as a special privileged layer.

“The social position of a communist who has at his disposal a car, a good apartment, regular vacations and receives a party maximum is different from that of a communist working in coal mines, where he receives from 50 to 60 rubles a month.”

Functional differences turn into social ones, social ones can develop into class ones.

"A party member of 1917 would hardly recognize himself in the face of a party member of 1928."

Rakovsky knows the role of violence in history, but he also knows the limits of this role. More than a year later, Rakovsky denounces the methods of command and coercion. With the help of methods of command and coercion, brought to bureaucratic virtuosity, "the top managed to turn into an irremovable and inviolable oligarchy, replacing the class and the party." A heavy accusation, but every word in it is weighed. Rakovsky calls on the party to subdue the bureaucracy, to deprive it of the "divine attribute of infallibility", to subject it to its strict control.

In an address to the Central Committee in April 1930, Rakovsky characterizes the regime created by Stalin as "dominion and internecine struggle of corporate interests of various categories of bureaucracy." A new economy can be built only on the initiative and culture of the masses. An official, even a communist one, cannot replace the people. “We do not believe in the so-called enlightened bureaucracy any more than our bourgeois predecessors, the revolutionaries of the late eighteenth century, in the so-called enlightened absolutism.”

Rakovsky's works, like all opposition literature in general, did not leave the manuscript stage. They corresponded, sent from one exile colony to another, went from hand to hand in political centers; they almost did not reach the masses. The first readers of Rakovsky's handwritten articles and circular letters were members of the ruling Stalinist group. In the official press, until recently, it was not uncommon to find echoes of Rakovsky's unpublished works in the form of tendentious, grossly distorted quotations, accompanied by rude personal attacks. There could be no doubt: Rakovsky's critical strikes hit the target.

The proclamation of the plan for the first five-year plan and the transition to the path of collectivization represented a radical borrowing from the platform of the Left Opposition. Many of the exiles sincerely believed in a new era. But the Stalinist faction demanded that the opposition publicly renounce the platform, which continued to be a forbidden document. Such duplicity was dictated by the bureaucratic concern for prestige. Many of the exiles grudgingly agreed to meet the bureaucracy: at this high price they wanted to pay for the opportunity to work in the party at least on the partial implementation of their own platform.

Rakovsky, no less than others, sought to return to the party. But he could not do this by denying himself. In Rakovsky's letters, always soft in tone, metallic notes sounded. “The biggest enemy of the proletarian dictatorship,” he wrote in 1929 at the height of the capitulation craze, “is a dishonorable attitude towards convictions. Like the Catholic Church, extorting conversion from a bed of dying atheists to the path of Catholicism, the party leadership forces the oppositionists to admit to imaginary mistakes and renounce their beliefs. If in this way it loses all right to respect for itself, then the oppositionist, who changes his convictions overnight, deserves only complete contempt.

The transition of many like-minded people to the camp of Stalin did not shake the old fighter for a minute. In a number of circular letters, he argued that the falsity of the regime, the might and lack of control of the bureaucracy, the strangulation of the party, trade unions and Soviets would devalue and even turn into their opposite all those economic borrowings that Stalin made from the platform of the opposition. “Moreover, this elimination can bring health improvement to the ranks of the opposition. Those who do not see in the platform a kind of restaurant card will remain in it, from which everyone chooses a dish according to their taste.” It was during this difficult period of repressions and capitulations that the sick and isolated Rakovsky showed what invincible firmness of character was hidden behind his mild benevolence towards people and delicate compliance. In a letter to one of the exiled colonies, he writes in 1930: “The most terrible thing is not exile or isolation, but capitulation.” It is not difficult to understand what effect the "old man's" voice had on the younger ones and what hatred it aroused in the ruling group.

Rakovsky writes a lot. Everything that comes through is rewritten, forwarded, read by everyone, young friends from exile abroad informed me. – In this regard, Khristian Grigoryevich is doing a great job. His position does not differ in the least from yours; just like you, it focuses on party mode ... "

But it got less and less. Correspondence between the exiled oppositionists in the first years of exile was relatively free. The authorities wanted to be aware of the exchange of opinions between them and hoped at the same time for a split among the exiles. These calculations turned out to be not so substantiated.

The capitulators and candidates for capitulation referred to the danger of a split in the party, to the need to help the party, etc. Rakovsky replied that the best help is loyalty to principles. Rakovsky was well aware of the inestimable significance of this rule for the policy of long-range aiming. The course of events brought him a kind of satisfaction. Most of the capitulators did not last more than three or four years in the party; despite the utmost compliance, they all came into conflict with politics and the party regime, and all again began to be subjected to a second exclusion from the party and exile. Suffice it to name such names as Zinoviev, Kamenev, Preobrazhensky, I. N. Smirnov, with them many hundreds of less well-known.

The position of the exiles was always painful, fluctuating in one direction or another, depending on the political situation. Rakovsky's position worsened continuously.

In the autumn of 1932, the Soviet government switched from a system of rationed grain procurements, i.e., in fact, from requisitioning grain at fixed prices, to a system of food tax, which leaves the peasant the right to freely dispose of all stocks, minus the tax.

And this measure, like many others, was the implementation of a measure that Rakovsky had recommended more than a year earlier, strongly demanding "a transition to a system of tax in kind with respect to the middle peasant in order to enable him to some extent dispose of his other products or, at least the appearance of such an opportunity, cutting off the accumulated fat.

When news of the death of Kh. G. Rakovsky in Siberian exile spread throughout the world press, the official Soviet press was silent. Rakovsky's friends—they are also my friends, for Rakovsky and I have been connected by 30 years of close personal political friendship—at first tried to verify the message through Soviet organs abroad. Prominent French politicians who had time to evaluate Rakovsky when he was the Soviet ambassador to France applied for information at the embassy. But they didn't answer from there either. In recent years, the news of Rakovsky's death has flared up not for the first time. But so far, every time it has turned out to be false. But why doesn't the Soviet telegraph agency refute it? This fact added to the anxiety. If Rakovsky really died, then there would be no point in hiding this fact. The stubborn silence of official Soviet bodies suggested that Stalin had something to hide. Like-minded Rakovsky in different countries sounded the alarm. Articles, appeals, posters appeared with the request: “Where is Rakovsky?” In the end, the veil over the mystery was lifted. According to a clearly inspired Reuters report from Moscow, Rakovsky "is engaged in medical practice in the Yakutsk region." If this certificate is correct - we have no evidence - then it testifies not only that Rakovsky is alive, but also that he was exiled from the distant cold Barnaul even further to the region of the Arctic Circle.

The mention of medical practice is brought in to mislead people who have little knowledge of politics and geography. True, Rakovsky is indeed a doctor by training. But apart from the few months immediately following his medical degree in France and the military service he served in Rumania over a quarter of a century ago as a military doctor, Rakovsky never practiced medicine. It is unlikely that he felt attracted to her in the 60th year of his life. But the mention of the Yakutsk region makes the incredible message credible. This is obviously about Rakovsky's new exile: from Central Asia to the far north. We have no confirmation of this yet. But, on the other hand, such a message cannot be invented.

In the official Soviet press, Rakovsky is listed as a counter-revolutionary. Rakovsky is not alone in this rank.

Without exception, Lenin's closest associates are under persecution. Of the seven members of the Politburo who, under Lenin, led the fate of the revolution and the country, three were expelled from the party and exiled or exiled, three were removed from the Politburo and got rid of exile only by a series of successive capitulations. We heard above Chicherin and Litvinov's review of Rakovsky as a diplomat. And today Rakovsky is ready to put his forces at the disposal of the Soviet state. He parted ways not with the October Revolution, not with the Soviet Republic, but with the Stalinist bureaucracy. But it was no coincidence that the divergence coincided with the period when the bureaucracy, emerging from the mass movement, subjugated the masses and established the old principle on new foundations: the state is me.

The mortal hatred for Rakovsky is caused by the fact that he places responsibility for the historical tasks of the revolution above the mutual responsibility of the bureaucracy. Its journalistic theorists speak only of workers and peasants. The grandiose bureaucracy does not exist at all in the official field of vision. Whoever pronounces the very name of the bureaucracy in vain becomes its enemy. So, Rakovsky from Kharkov was transferred further away, to Paris, so that upon returning to Moscow he would be deported to Astrakhan, and from there to Barnaul. The ruling group hoped that the difficult material conditions, the oppression of isolation, would break the old fighter and force him, if not to reconcile, then to be silent. But this calculation, like many others, turned out to be erroneous. Never, perhaps, did Rakovsky live a more intense, fruitful life than during the years of his exile. The bureaucracy began to squeeze the ring around the Barnaul exile more and more tightly. Rakovsky, in the end, fell silent, that is, his voice ceased to reach the outside world. But under these conditions his very silence was more powerful than his eloquence. What was left to do with a fighter who, by the age of 60, had retained the fiery energy with which he had entered the life path as a young man. Stalin did not dare to shoot him, or even imprison him. But with ingenuity, which never betrayed him in this area, he found a way out: the Yakutsk region needs doctors. True, Rakovsky's heart needs a warm climate. But that is why Stalin chose the Yakutsk region.

Christian Georgievich Rakovsky (real name - Stanchev), (1873-1941), was born in Kotel, (Bulgaria), in the family of a public figure. Bulgarian by nationality. Education: higher - graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Montpellier in France. In 1893 met G.V. Plekhanov, and from that time became close to the Russian revolutionary movement. In 1898-1899. served in the army, demobilized for health reasons. In 1900 Kh.G. Rakovsky was recruited by the intelligence department of the General Staff of Austria-Hungary, and focused on infiltrating Russian revolutionary circles. While in Russia in 1900-1902, Rakovsky became close friends with P.B. Struve, P.N. Milyukov, V.I. Lenin, Yu.L. Martov. In 1907 joined the Bolsheviks, but maintained close ties with L.D. Trotsky, who was then in opposition to Lenin. He was taken under surveillance by Russian counterintelligence, but for some reason he was not arrested. Rakovsky was one of the people who transported large sums of money from "interested persons" in the West to the Bolsheviks - for the publication of the press, leaflets, for the purchase of fake documents and weapons. Behind such "philanthropy" were very often the interests of foreign intelligence agencies, and in this case - Austria-Hungary. In 1915 Rakovsky was attracted to himself by one of the main "sponsors" of the Bolsheviks - A. Parvus, and Rakovsky transferred money to Trotsky and Lenin already from him. In 1916 Rakovsky was arrested in Romania on charges of spying for Austria-Hungary and Germany, but after the Russian Revolution in May 1917. released and left for Sweden. He returned to Russia in December 1917, and immediately received from Lenin an appointment to Sevastopol, where he organized Red Guard detachments with the help of sailors. First of all, Rakovsky ordered the taking of hostages from among the "possessing classes" and officers; most of the naval officers were executed on his orders. The sailors of Rakovsky staged mass robberies in the city; Rakovsky did not hinder them, but, on the contrary, encouraged such actions, considering them "genuinely revolutionary energy of the proletarians." Those who tried to protect their property were executed without trial. Then Rakovsky organized a "campaign to the Danube": an attempt by sailors to seize Bessarabia, but nothing came of it: the advancing Romanian troops easily defeated this undisciplined horde; moreover, Rakovsky had no military knowledge. After that, Rakovsky arrived in Odessa, where he created the "Temporary Autonomous Collegium for Combating Counter-Revolution in Romania and Ukraine." Rakovsky could not turn around "in full breadth": the German offensive prevented him, but he managed to shoot large groups of hostages. The most massive executions were in Razdelnaya, Balta, Tiraspol, and Nikolaev. In Nikolaev, in particular, all the prisoners in the city prison were executed.

Participated in negotiations with the government of the Ukrainian Central Rada, was sent to Berlin for revolutionary work, but in November 1918. was arrested by the Germans and deported. And in January 1919. Rakovsky became the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (until 1923) and the NKVD of Ukraine (until 1920), at the same time. He actively promoted the idea of ​​creating "Labor armies", but most of all he "distinguished himself" in carrying out the so-called "communization" - an attempt to create large-scale agriculture, where not only land, but also life were generalized: Rakovsky eliminated separate living, forbade individual cooking, forbade keeping a garden or a garden, a small bird. Even the dishes were shared. In his zeal, he went as far as trying to regulate intimate relations between spouses: he composed several instructions on this matter. He made attendance at political classes mandatory, and Rakovsky sanctioned corporal punishment for "deviators".

He sanctioned the extremely cruel suppression of the movement of ataman Grigoriev: he ordered the shelling of the villages, the population of which assisted Grigoriev, repeatedly ordered not to take prisoners. A significant part of the civilian population tried to leave the area of ​​​​the battles of the Red Army with Grigoriev and move to Romania, but Rakovsky ordered to stop the refugees with machine-gun fire and grapeshot, preventing them from crossing the Dniester, where the border was then. It must be said that not all commanders of the Red Army carried out such orders: for example, G.I. Kotovsky refused to shoot at the refugees and did not prevent them from going abroad.

In 1923 supported Trotsky, after which he was removed from work in Kyiv and sent as ambassador to London, and in 1925-1927 he was the plenipotentiary in France. Rakovsky considered his transfer to diplomatic work a "link", and instead of his direct official duties, he was engaged in helping Trotsky establish contacts with his supporters abroad. In addition, in 1923, Rakovsky made contact with people from British and French intelligence: he later claimed that he "did it on behalf of Trotsky." In December 1927 was expelled from the party, withdrawn from its Central Committee and exiled to Kustanai, and then to Barnaul. He considered it necessary to create illegal organizations focused on the physical extermination of the most prominent representatives of the regime. To get the opportunity to do this, he imitated "reconciliation" with Stalin, and in 1935. He was reinstated in the CPSU (b), and received a managerial post in the People's Commissariat of Health. However, he was closely watched by the NKVD: the propaganda of terrorism that Rakovsky conducted among the young people he recruited into his cells did not go unnoticed, and in January 1937. Rakovsky was arrested.

In March 1938 Kh.G. Rakovsky was found guilty of espionage and preparation of terrorist attacks, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He fully admitted his guilt. He served his sentence in the Oryol Central. On September 11, 1941, in connection with the threat of the capture of Orel by German troops, some of the prisoners were shot without trial or investigation. Among them, Kh.G. Rakovsky was also shot. Together with him, two of his accomplices, Bessonov and Pletnev, were shot.

In 1988 Christian Rakovsky was fully rehabilitated and reinstated in the CPSU.

//Ukrainian historical journal. 2002. No. 1. (in Ukrainian)

//Russian past. Book 1. M..1991.

Zeman Z., Sharlau U. Credit for the revolution Parvus plan. M., 2007.

Landovsky I. Red Symphony. M., 1996.

Felshtinsky Yu.G Trotsky's archive. T.7. M., 2009.

Ataman Grigoriev was a Ukrainian Social Revolutionary. At first he was an ally of the Reds, but became disillusioned with them. He was supported by a significant part of the peasants of Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson provinces and Bessarabia. More about this: Ryabchikov S.V. "Greens" in the south of Russia. New materials. M., 2008., Belash V.A. Roads of Nestor Makhno. M., 1996.

More about this: Shulgin V.V. Days.1920. M., 1991.

Ioffe N.A. Time ago. M., 1992. (Nadezhda Adolfovna Ioffe is the daughter of a Soviet diplomat, A.A. Ioffe, an ally of Trotsky, and she knew a lot).

Zazubrin V. KGB. M., 2010.

Rogovin V.Z. The party of the executed. M., 1998.

The order to carry out the execution was given by B.Z. Kobulov.

//Questions of the history of the CPSU. 1989. No. 7.