Nikolai Alexejewitsch Voznesensky

Vosnesensky 1938

Nikolai Voznesensky ( Russian Николай Алексеевич Вознесенский ; born November 18 ^{. Jul} / 1. December  1903 ^greg. In Tjoploje , Tula Governorate , Russian Empire ; † 1. October 1950 in Leningrad ) was a Soviet economist and politician .

biography

Ascent

Vosnesensky was the son of a clerk in the forestry office. His older brother Alexander Vosnesensky became a Soviet economist. Voznesensky had been a Komsomolze since 1919/20 and a party member in 1921. In 1924 he attended the Sverdlovsk party college . Then he was a party functionary in the Donets coal district . In 1925 he became editor-in-chief of the regional newspaper Tula Junge Kommunar . His career showed considerable deviations from the typical course of other political figures. After graduating from the Institute of the Red Professorship in 1930 , he became a professor in 1931 and director of this institute in 1934 at the age of 31. In 1935, at the suggestion of the First Secretary of the Leningrad party organization Andrei Zhdanov, he was appointed chairman of the planning commission for the area. In 1935 he also received his doctorate. rer. pole.

At the center of power

Zhdanov, the second man after Joseph Stalin in the CPSU since the late 1930s , continued to support Vosnesensky. In 1938 he was appointed chairman of the State Planning Commission of the USSR - also known as Gosplan . He was thus a high-ranking member of the government of the Soviet Union. In 1941 - only 38 years old - he received the newly created post of Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (i.e. Deputy Prime Minister) for the complex of economic affairs in the Council of Ministers of the USSR from Stalin. In 1942 he was appointed to the State Defense Committee of the USSR - an internal super cabinet with only eight members, chaired by Stalin.

From 1941 to 1947 he was a candidate for the Politburo . From February 28, 1947 to March 1, 1949 he was a full member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the highest political body in the USSR.

Sacrifice of Stalin and Beria

In 1948, shortly after the death of his mentor Zhdanov, whose opponents were Lavrenti Beria and Georgi Malenkov , Voznesensky suddenly disappeared from public life in 1949 without any explanation. Khrushchev reported in his secret speech on the XX. Party convention that he was involved in the " Leningrad affair " invented by Stalin and Beria . Nikita Khrushchev stated :

“It is well known that Voznesensky and Kuznetsov were excellent and talented officials. In their day they were close to Stalin […]. The promotion of Voznesensky and Kuznetsov shocked Beria. As can be ascertained today, Beria and his subordinates constructed materials in the form of declarations and anonymous letters, in the form of various rumors and conversations, and 'foisted' on Stalin. "

Voznesensky was expelled from the Politburo on March 1, 1949. In September 1950 the trial took place against him and other party functionaries who were accused of waging a fight against the party and its Central Committee. He and the Secretary of the Central Committee for State Security Affairs Alexei Kuznetsov , the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian RSFSR Mikhail Rodionov , the First Secretary of the Leningrad Party Pyotr Popkov (1903–1950) and many other high party officials lost their lives. The following reasons are given why Stalin had the excellent but also elitist Vosnesensky liquidated: Irregularities in the economic statistics by Gosplan (claims by Beria and Malenkov) and Beria's report to Stalin, according to which Vosnesensky had encouraged Molotov in 1941 - when Stalin was in a crisis , to replace him.

The circumstances of Voznesensky's death are unclear. It is believed that he was shot shortly after the verdict was announced. SI Semin reported, according to Dmitry Volkogonov , that Voznesensky was kept in prison for three months after being sentenced to death by shooting . It was only in December that he was only lightly clothed and transported to Moscow on a truck and presumably froze to death.

Voznesensky was married to Marija Andrejewna Litvinowa (1909-2000) since 1928 and had two daughters.

At the beginning of de-Stalinization , Voznesensky was rehabilitated on April 30, 1954.

Awards

• Order of Lenin (2 ×)
• Stalin Prize

literature

• Spuler: rulers and governments of the world. Minister-Ploetz Vol. 4, 1964, ISBN 3-87640-026-0 .
• Montefiore: Stalin - At the court of the red tsar. S. Fischer-Verlag, 2005.
• Michel Tatu: Power and Powerlessness in the Kremlin. Ullstein, Frankfurt, 1967.
• Merle Fainsod : How Russia is governed. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1965.
• Dimitri Volkogonov : Stalin. Triumph and tragedy. A political portrait . From the Russian by Vesna Jovanoska, Econ Verlag Düsseldorf, 3rd edition 1989; ISBN 3-430-19847-X .

Web links

• Literature by and about Nikolai Alexejewitsch Vosnesensky in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Nikolai Alexejewitsch Voznesensky in the press kit 20th Century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Khrushchev's secret speech on the XX. 1956 party congress