Jelena Dmitrijewna Stasowa

Portrait photo of Jelena Stassowa from the 1920s

Elena Stasova ( Russian Елена Дмитриевна Стасова ; born October 3 ^{. Jul} / 15. October  1873 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg , †  31 December 1966 in Moscow ) was a Russian - Soviet revolutionary and politician .

Life

Jelena Stasova was the daughter of the well-known lawyer Dmitri Stassow , who appeared in major court cases at that time and was also one of the founders of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and the Russian Music Society . Her uncle was the art critic Vladimir Stasov . Until the age of 13, Stasova received home schooling before entering the 5th grade of a grammar school, which she graduated in 1890 with a "Golden Medal" for excellent performance and was given the right to teach Russian language and literature in Sunday schools.

At the age of 20, Stasova made the acquaintance of Nadezhda Krupskaya , who would later become Lenin's wife . Together they began to teach at Sunday schools and there to spread the ideas of Russian social democracy. In 1898 she became an active member of the "Combat League for the Liberation of the Working Class", a predecessor organization of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Russia (SDLP) and later the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and was involved in party work in Saint Petersburg , Oryol , Moscow , Minsk and Vilna . She was the secretary of the Petersburg Committee and the “North Office” of the Central Committee of the RSDLP .

She spent the years 1905 and 1906 in emigration in Switzerland , where she worked for the Central Committee in Exile of the RSDLP and was involved in the publication of the newspaper “Das Proletariat”. In 1906 she was involved in the smuggling of arms, money and party workers across the border of the Grand Duchy of Finland , and from 1907 to 1912 she was a representative of the Central Committee in Tbilisi .

During her illegal party work, Jelena Stasova carried the code names Absolut, Varwara Ivanovna, Guschtscha ("thicket"), Delnaya ("capable"), Delta, Selma and Gerta . After her arrest and conviction, she spent the years 1913 to 1916 in exile in the southern Siberian village of Kuragino .

In the revolutionary year of 1917, Stasova became a candidate, from 1918 to 1920 a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Russia ( Bolsheviks ), and secretary of the Petrograd Committee. In 1918 she was a co-founder and member of the executive committee of the Petrograd Cheka .

Stasova and Lenin at the 2nd  Comintern Congress in 1920

In September 1920, Stasova became secretary of the Presidium of the Council for "Propaganda and Deeds of the Peoples of the East" and a member of the Caucasian Office of the Central Committee of the party. From 1921 to 1925 she worked as a liaison woman in the apparatus of the Communist Party of Germany and representative of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in Berlin .

In 1925 Stasova returned to the Soviet Union and until 1937 was chairman of the Soviet Central Committee of the International Red Aid and deputy chairman of the executive committee of the organization. In this capacity she became a member of a World Anti- War and Anti-Fascist Committee at the Amsterdam Anti - War Congress in 1932, and in 1934 she participated in the establishment of a World Anti- War and Anti-Fascist Women's Committee.

From 1930 to 1934 Stasowa was also a member of the Central Control Commission of the CPSU , from 1935 to 1943 a member of the International Control Commission of the Comintern. In addition, between 1938 and 1946 she was editor of the Soviet magazine "Internazionalnaja Literatura".

Jelena Stassowa retired in 1946. In 1948 she received a “strict party reprimand” from the Central Committee of the CPSU for “praising” Nikolai Bukharin, who was executed in 1938 under Josef Stalin .

Stasova's urn was buried in Moscow's Red Square by the Kremlin wall .

Honors

Jelena Stasova was awarded the Order of Lenin four times and was a heroine of socialist labor .

At the House on the Embankment in the Kremlin near a plaque was affixed:

"The professional revolutionary, active participant in the Great October Socialist Revolution, member of the CPSU since 1898 and heroine of socialist work Jelena Dmitrijewna Stasowa lived in this house from 1932 to 1966"

The “International Children's Home” ( Interdom ) , which was founded by the International Red Aid in Ivanovo in 1933 and still exists today, as well as streets in several cities, including Moscow and Saint Petersburg, were named after Jelena Stasova .

Works

• Stranicy žizny i borby (1960; "Pages of Life and Struggle", autobiography)
• Stasova, Elena Dmitrijevna: Comrade "Absolute": memories . Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1969, 2nd edition 1978

Web links

Commons : Elena Stasova  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Jelena Stassowa in the catalog of the German National Library
• Article Jelena Stasowa in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D105947~2a%3DJelena%20Stassowa~2b%3DJelena%20Stassowa