Ivars Smilga

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Ivars Smilga (1917)

Ivar Smilga ( Russian Ивар Тенисович Смилга , Iwar Tenissowitsch Smilga , even Ivar Smilga * November 20 jul. / 2. December  1892 greg. In Aloja , Governorate of Livonia ; † 10. January 1937 in Moscow ) was a Latvian revolutionary, economist and Member of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union .

Life

Ivars Smilga was born the son of a large Latvian farmer and forest owner. His father, Tenis Smilga, was shot dead by Russian troops as one of the leaders in the Baltic provinces when the 1905 revolution was put down . A year later, Ivars Smilga, only 15 years old, joined the Bolsheviks . He went to Moscow to study economics. There he was monitored and arrested by the Ochrana , the tsarist secret police. He was sentenced to exile in Siberia, in the Yenisei Rajon (Russian: Енисе́йский райо́н). Only after the February Revolution of 1917 was he released and was able to take up political activity again.

In April 1917, Ivars Smilga was elected to the party's central committee. During this time he Russified his name to Iwar Tenissowitsch Smilga. He was involved in the preparation of the October Revolution in 1917 and acted in particular among the sailors of the Baltic Fleet , who elected him chairman of the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet ( Centrobalt , Russian: Центральный комитет Балтийского флота). So he won the crews of the Baltic Fleet to side with the Bolsheviks. In 1918 he took part in the Finnish uprising , after which he became one of the leading organizers of the Red Army in the civil war , temporarily he was head of its political department (Russian: Политическое управление Революционного военного совета). From 1921 to 1927 he was one of the leading employees of the State Committee for Economic Planning ( Gosplan ), at times its deputy chairman, and from 1925 at the same time rector of the Plekhanov Institute for Economics .

Left oppositionists in Moscow in 1927 (Smilga seated, 2nd from right)

Smilga was one of the United Opposition's masterminds . In 1927 Stalin had him - like all Trotsky's followers - expelled from the party; he was exiled to Narym in West Siberia . In 1929 Smilga "capitulated", that is, he signed a declaration of loyalty to Stalin, and was then re-accepted into the CPSU . But in 1932 he resumed his opposition activities together with Ivan Smirnov and even resisted Stalin in the face. He was arrested again in 1935 and sentenced to five years in prison, but executed in prison in 1937 without a public trial. (According to other sources, January 10, 1937 was the date of his death sentence; he was shot the following year.) His wife, Nadezhda Vasilievna Polujan, was shot in November 1937. His brother Pāvils, his brother-in-law Jan Wassiljewitsch Polujan and other family members also fell victim to the Great Terror .

literature

  • Vitālijs Salda: Maskavas latviešu elite 20. gs. 20.-30. gados . In: Juris Goldmanis (ed.): Latvieši PSRS varas virsotnēs: Ilūzijas un traģēdija. 20th gadsimta 20th-30th gadi . Zvaigzne ABC, Riga 2013, ISBN 978-9934-0-3467-1 , pp. 17-134 (Latvian).

Footnotes

  1. ^ Liliana Riga: The Bolsheviks and the Russian Empire . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012. ISBN 978-1-107-01422-0 . P. 155.
  2. ↑ Memories of his daughter: Tatjana Iwarowna Smilga-Polujan: May 22, 1919 - September 27, 2014
  3. ↑ Tatjana Iwarowna Smilga-Polujan: The Gulag and the Roslovian smell . In: Paola Messana: Soviet communal living. An oral history of the Kommunalka . Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2011. ISBN 978-0-230-11016-8 . Pp. 79–85, here p. 79.
  4. ^ Israel Getzler: Kronstadt 1917-1921. The Fate of a Soviet Democracy . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002. ISBN 0-521-24479-X . P. 43.
  5. ↑ Alexander Rabinowitch : Prelude to Revolution. The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1991. ISBN 0-253-34768-8 . P. 46.
  6. ↑ Uldis Ģērmanis: Colonel Vacietis and the Latvian Riflemen in World War I and in the October Revolution . Almqvist och Wiksell, Stockholm 1974. p. 275.
  7. ^ Simon Pirani: The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920–24: Soviet Workers and the New Communist Elite . Routledge, London 2008. ISBN 978-0-415-43703-5 . P. 89.
  8. ^ Robert Campbell: A biobibliographical dictionary of Russian and Soviet economics . Routledge, New York 2012. ISBN 978-0-415-51946-5 . P. 384.
  9. ↑ Tatjana Iwarowna Smilga-Polujan: The Gulag and the Roslovian smell . P. 80.
  10. ^ Alan Bullock : Hitler and Stalin. Parallel lives . Siedler, Berlin 1991. ISBN 3-88680-370-8 . P. 278.
  11. ^ Leon Trotsky: The challenge of the left opposition . Pathfinder Press, New York 1981. ISBN 0-87348-615-3 , p. 54.
  12. ↑ a b Latvians in the Soviet Political Elite 1920-1937 , accessed November 17, 2014.
  13. ^ Robert Conquest : The Great Terror. A reassessment . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1990. ISBN 0-19-505580-2 . P. 74.

Web links

Commons : Ivars Smilga  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Smilga, Ivars
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Смилга, Ивар Тенисович (Russian); Smilga, Iwar Tenissowitsch (Russian); Smilga, Ivar (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Latvian revolutionary, economist and member of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Aloja , Livonia Governorate
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1937
Place of death Moscow