Alexander Nikolayevich Poskrjobyshev

Poskrjobyshev (to the right of Stalin) on the XVII. CPSU party congress , 1934

Alexander Poskrebyshev ( Russian Александр Николаевич Поскрёбышев , scientific. Transliteration Aleksandr Nikolaevich Poskrëbyšev; born July 26 ^{. Jul} / 7. August  1891 ^greg. In Uspenskoe , Circle Slobodskoi , Vyatka Governorate ; † 3. January 1965 in Moscow ) was from 1935 to 1952 Secretary of Stalin .

Life

The shoemaker's son Poskrjobyschew, by profession surgeon , resigned in March 1917 Bolsheviks in. From 1922 he worked in the party's Central Committee apparatus and between 1924 and 1929 became Josef Stalin's closest collaborator. In 1931 Poskrjobyshev became Stalin's private secretary and his most important confidante, and finally, after the death of Ivan Towstucha in 1935, he took over the management of his secretariat. From 1934 Poskrjobyshev was a candidate, from 1939 to 1956 a member of the Central Committee of the WKP (b) or CPSU , from 1946 a member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR .

According to the traditions of contemporaries, Poskrjobyshev was characterized by a phenomenal memory and a pronounced zest for work, which manifested itself in working days of no less than 16 hours. He was the filter through which any information passed to Stalin, and it was his job to add his own reflections to the correspondence received - and in many cases Stalin listened to his advice. However, the relationship between the secretary and his superior must have been markedly dependent. When Poskrjobyshev's wife, Bronislava Metallikova, who was largely related by marriage to Trotsky , was arrested in 1939, Stalin left him at his post , contrary to the usual treatment of family members of “ enemies of the people ”. Poskrjobyshev, probably driven by concern for his wife, became all the more the loyal servant of the "great landlord". According to the memoirs of Yuri Trifonov , his power over his secretary extended to the use of physical violence. During a joint hospital stay, the former secretary is said to have confided in the writer: “He [Stalin] hit me! He grabbed my hair and hit my head against the table top ... ” Poskrjobyshev's wife was shot dead in 1941 on the pretext of espionage.

In November 1952, Stalin, probably under pressure from Beria , removed Poskrjobyshev from his apparatus. At the beginning of 1953 he was arrested in connection with the “ doctors' conspiracy ”, but released after Stalin's death in March. For years there was uncertainty about his whereabouts; Rumors circulated that he had been liquidated.
Poskrjobyshev initially remained in the Central Committee and only left politics in 1956, after the XX. Congress of the CPSU , at which Khrushchev attacked him personally in his secret speech on the personality cult and its consequences and described him as Stalin's “loyal squire”. He died in 1965 and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Remarks

1. ↑ Trifonov, Ju. V .: Zapiski soseda. In: Drużba Narodov (1989), 10, p. 39.
2. ^ Borys Lewytzkyj: From red terror to socialist legalism. The Soviet Security Service, Munich 1961, p. 297.
3. ↑ Izvestija CK KPSS (1989), 3, pp. 128-170; German: Khrushchev: On the personality cult and its consequences ( Memento from January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )

literature

• Leontjuk, AM; Torčinov, VA (ed.): Vokrug Stalina. Istoriko-biografičeskij spravočnik, Sankt-Peterburg, Filologičeskij fakul'tet Sankt-Peterburgskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, 2000.
• Zalesskij, KA (ed.): Imperija Stalina. Biografičeskij enciklopedičeskij slovar ', Moskva, Veče, 2000, p. 369.
• NA Poskrebyschew , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 20/1950 of May 8, 1950, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)