Nikolai Nikolayevich Sukhanov

Nikolai Sukhanov

Lenin's address at the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets (painting by WA Serov (1955) on a 4-kopeck postage stamp of the Soviet Union ("50 heroic years") from 1967)

Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov ( Russian Николай Николаевич Суханов , scientific. Transliteration Nikolai Nikolaevich Suchanov , too: Nikolai Sukhanov , actually Nikolai Nikolaevich Gimmer (Гиммер / Gimmer ); born 9. December 1882 in Moscow ; died 29. June 1940 in Omsk ) was a Russian Writer, journalist and Menshevik politician.

biography

Nikolai Sukhanov was born in Moscow. As a student he became a member of a socialist group and was a member of the Social Revolutionary Party since 1903 . At the end of 1902 he studied in Paris. He heard lectures by Lenin , Martov , Trotsky and Chernov . In 1903 he moved to Moscow. He was arrested in 1904 for possession of illegal literature and sentenced to one year in prison, which he served in Moscow's Taganka Prison. After his release he took part in the first revolution from 1905 to 1907 . He wrote articles for the magazine Russkoje Bogatsvo ("Russian Wealth") and wrote various papers on agricultural issues. In 1910 he was arrested again. He went into exile in Arkhangelsk . In 1913 he returned to Saint Petersburg . He became editor of the magazines Sovremennik and Letopis . He advocated freedom of expression and an end to political censorship in newspapers and books. He was also a strong opponent of a war between Russia and Germany. In the first months of the 1917 revolution, he was elected to the Soviet Petrograd Executive Committee and played an important role in the establishment of the first Provisional Government . During this time he was also an editor for the daily newspaper Novaya Schisn ("New Life"). Sukhanov was a confidante of Gorky . As a supporter of the peace negotiations with Germany, he was directly against the war policy of Pavel Miliukov and Alexander Kerensky . After the October Revolution, Sukhanov became a fierce critic of the Bolshevik regime. He was a key figure in the first revolutionary government. In the years 1919–1923 he published an extensive eyewitness account of the entire period of the revolution of 1917. Sukhanov is considered to be its most important chronicler. He assesses leaving the Congress in the Smolny Institute of the democratic wing of Russian Social Democracy, with which the Mensheviks left the political stage to the Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries , as follows:

“We went without knowing where or why, after breaking with the Soviet and teaming up with the counter-revolutionary elements. We have discredited ourselves in the eyes of the masses, undermining the future of our organization. Moreover, we left after we had given the Bolsheviks a free hand and made them masters of the situation. We left the entire arena of revolution to them. "

His seven-volume work was suppressed under Stalin. In 1931 Sukhanov was accused in the so-called Menshevik trial and ended up in prison for alleged counterrevolutionary activities. He was later sentenced a second time. In 1940 he was shot on the orders of Stalin.

Publications

Main work

Sapissok o rewoljuzii ( Russian Записок о революции , scientific transliteration Zapisok o revoljucii ), 7 volumes, Petersburg: ed. SI Grschebin , 1919–1923 ( digitized: I (1919) , III-VII ) ( content - Russian overview )

Selection translations

(German) Suchanow, Nikolaj Nikolajewitsch: 1917 Diary of the Russian Revolution , selected, transferred and edited by Nikolaus Ehlert, foreword by Iring Fetscher. Munich, Piper & Co., 1967
(English) NN Suchanow: The Russian Revolution 1917. A Personal Record. Edited and translated by Joel Carmichael. Oxford University Press, New York 1955.

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References and footnotes

↑ cf. z. B. the assessments of Dimitri Wolkogonow and Israel Getzler.
↑ Sukhanov, Sapiski o rewoljuzii, Vol. 7, pp. 219 f. (quoted from D. Wolkogonow, p. 162)

literature

Israel Getzler : Nikolai Sukhanov: Chronicler of the Russian Revolution. Oxford, Palgrave, 2002 ( partial online view )
Dimitri Volkogonov : Lenin. Utopia and terror. German translation by Markus Schweisthal, Christian Geisinger, Jana Neik and Christiane Sieg Düsseldorf: Econ, ²1996

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Sukhanov, Nikolai Nikolayevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Suchanov, Nikolay Nikolayevich; Суханов, Николай Николаевич (Russian); Suchanov, Nikolaj Nikolaevič; Suchanov, Nikolaj Nikolajewitsch; Gimmer, Nikolaj Nikolaevič; Sukhanov, Nikolaĭ Nikolaevich; Himmer, Nikolaj Nikolajewitsch; Sukhanov, Nikolaj Nikolajewitsch
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian writer, journalist and Menshevik
DATE OF BIRTH	December 9, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH	Moscow
DATE OF DEATH	June 29, 1940
Place of death	Omsk

[1] . z. B. the assessments of Dimitri Wolkogonow and Israel Getzler.

[2] Sukhanov, Sapiski o rewoljuzii, Vol. 7, pp. 219 f. (quoted from D. Wolkogonow, p. 162)