Alexander Lazarevich Abramov-Mirow

Alexander Lasarewitsch Abramov-Mirow ( Russian Александр Лазаревич Абрамов-Миров ., Scientific transliteration Aleksandr Lazarevič Abramov-Mirov ; also Yakov handed down as a first name, pseudonyms: Meirowitsch, Aleksandrov, Lazarev ; * 19th October 1895 in Siauliai , † 25. November 1937 in Moscow ) was a Soviet Comintern and secret service official .

Life

Abramow-Mirow was born the son of a Jewish merchant in Šiauliai, Lithuania . As a child strongly influenced by his brothers, who were members of the General Jewish Workers' Union , he nevertheless joined the Bolshevik Party in 1916 and took part in the October Revolution of 1917. In the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 he organized the so-called "German Brigade" on the Western Front on behalf of Leon Trotsky . In the following years he was pro forma second secretary of the Soviet embassy in Berlin , but in reality he headed the Berlin headquarters of the Comintern's own secret service, called OMS , and organized the Comintern's “technical” tasks (money transfers, correspondence, document production, etc.) in Germany and large parts of Europe.

From 1926 Abramow-Mirow took over the central management of the OMS in Moscow from his previous superior, the Comintern's "gray eminence" Ossip Pyatnitsky (who, however, continued to play a major role in Comintern intelligence). He remained in this position for almost ten years, with the Comintern's entire “technical” espionage and liaison work being in his hands. His contemporaries remembered him as extremely friendly, competent and loyal.

After the VII Comintern World Congress, Abramov-Mirow was increasingly ousted from the Comintern. In September 1936 he was transferred to the Red Army overseas reconnaissance , where he was in charge of Soviet military espionage in the Spanish Civil War . Finally, like most OMS employees, Abramov-Mirov fell victim to the Great Terror . Arrested on May 21, 1937, the NKVD assigned him a central role in a fictional “Anti-Comintern bloc” that is said to have disintegrated the Comintern from within. Among other things, he was accused of supporting the ostracized Trotsky with money through OMS channels. Presumably under severe torture, like many others, he made a "confession" in which he incriminated his old comrade and superior, Pyatnitsky, among other things.

Abramov-Mirow was born on November 25, 1937 sentenced to death and one day later shot ; Stalin's order for this was given on November 1st. His wife Jelena, who among other things worked as a TASS correspondent in Spain, was also shot three months later. Abramov-Mirov's remains are in a mass grave in Moscow's Donskoy Cemetery . His rehabilitation took place in 1958.

literature

• Bernhard H. Bayerlein (Ed.): Georgi Dimitroff. Diaries 1933-1943 . Volume 1. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-351-02510-6 , p. 161.
• Branko Lazitch, Milorad M. Drachkovitch (Eds.): Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern . New, revised, and expanded edition. Hoover Institution Press, Stanford CA 1986, ISBN 0-8179-8401-1 , ( Hoover Press publication 340).
• Reinhard Müller : The Anti-Comintern Block. Process structure and victim perspective. In: UTOPIE Kreativ special issue (1997), ISSN  0863-4890 , pp. 38-51.
• Vladimir I. Pyatnickij, Anatolij E. Taras: Osip Pyatnickij i Komintern na vesach istorii . Minsk, Charvest 2004, ISBN 985-13-2140-0 , pp. 194-195.
• Boris A. Starkov: The Trial That Was Not Held. In: Europe-Asia Studies 46, 1994, 8, ISSN  0038-5859 , pp. 1297-1315.
• KA Zalesskij (Ed.): Imperija Stalina. Biografičeskij enciklopedičeskij slovar '. Moskva, Veče 2000, ISBN 5-7838-0716-8 , p. 13.

Web links

• Entry on Abramow-Mirow in the victim database "Otkrytyj spisok" (Russian)
• Execution list approved by Stalin from November 1, 1937 with Abramow-Mirow under item 1 (Russian, with photocopy)
• Entry on Abramow-Mirow and his wife on mos.memo.ru under their last registration address (Russian)
• Alexander Abramow-Mirow on hrono.ru (Russian)