Ossip Aronovich Pyatnitsky

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ossip Pyatnitsky (before 1936)

Osip piatnitsky ( Russian Осип Аронович Пятницкий even Iossif Orionowitsch Russian Иосиф Орионович , real name Tarschis ; born January 17, jul. / 29. January  1882 greg. In Wilkomir ; †  30th October 1938 ) was a Soviet politician and member of the Executive Committee the Communist International (EKKI). He fell victim to the Great Terror in the Soviet Union .

Life

Activities until 1917

Pyatnitsky was born into a Jewish family. He learned to read and write by himself. From the age of 13 he learned the trade of a tailor. At the end of 1897 he moved to Kovno to live with his brother .

From mid-1898 he took part in a revolutionary circle and joined the illegal trade union; from that year onwards he was also credited with membership in the RSDLP.

He later moved to Vilna . There he was secretary and cashier in the dressmakers' union. In 1899 and 1900 he was one of the organizers of the May Day celebrations in Vilnius. The event was violently ended by the police on both occasions.

In 1900 he contacted the editorial staff of the Iskra newspaper and soon became one of its first representatives in Russia. In the course of a few years he organized a network to illegally deliver newspapers from abroad.

In early March 1902 he was arrested and held in Lukjanowski Prison in Kiev . Here he learned the basics of Marxist theory with the help of Iosif Blumenfeld , a later Menshevik , as well as Nikolai Bauman and Maxim Litwinow . On August 18, he managed to flee abroad with another eleven Iskra employees . From here he was again occupied with establishing a network for the delivery of illegal literature to Russia, the center of which was Berlin .

At the congress of the Foreign League of Russian Social Democracy in Geneva in October 1903, Pyatnitsky sided with the Bolsheviks after long vacillations .

As the pressure from the German and Swiss police increased, Pyatnitsky returned to Russia and settled in Odessa . He became a member of the city committee of the RSDLP of Odessa (secretary was S. Gusew), was involved in the organization of the strikes and demonstrations of October 12, 1905, which ended with fighting between workers and police. He was arrested on January 15, 1906, but could not be identified, so that he was released six months later. Then he went to Moscow. There he became head of the conspiratorial and technical apparatus of the Moscow City Committee. In 1908 he went abroad again and was employed in the RSDLP's foreign office.

Politics from 1917 to 1937

After the February Revolution of 1917 he came to Moscow and directed political work with railroad workers. At the Moscow City Party Conference from 3-4. April 1917 he was elected a member of the city committee. In early October, at a meeting with members of the Moscow City, District and Territorial Committees of the RSDLP, on Lenin's letter to the Central Committee of the St. Petersburg and Moscow Committees of the Party (on the possibility of an uprising in Moscow), he stated that Moscow did not take the initiative can seize the insurrection, but can and must support the insurrection when it begins in Petersburg. He based his opinion on the fact that the workers of the Red Guard were poorly armed and that the links between the party's city committee and the garrisons were weak.

On October 11, 1917, he was sent to Petrograd by the city committee to provide information about his views. On October 25, he became a member of the party headquarters for the direction of the armed uprising in Moscow. On October 29th, he was co-organizer of the distribution to the Red Guards of weapons discovered at the Sokolniki freight yard of the Kazan Railway. On November 4, at a joint meeting of the Moscow City, District and Territorial Committees of the RSDLP, he reported on the activities of the party headquarters to lead the armed uprising.

From December 11, 1917, he was chairman of the All-Russian Extraordinary Congress of Railway Unions of Craftsmen and Workers in Petrograd. From there he was delegated to the 2nd Extraordinary All-Russian Congress of Railway Workers from January 5th to 30th, 1918 in Petrograd. There he was elected to the Executive Committee. Since January 1918 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet. He was a delegate of the 3rd All-Russian Congress of Soviets (January 23-31, 1918) and was elected as a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. From February 1919 he was chairman of the central committee of the unified union of railway workers of the RSFSR .

In 1918/19 Pyatnizki was in Berlin with Karl Radek .

From 1921 Pyatnitsky worked in the Executive Committee of the Communist International (EKKI). Until 1926 he headed the internal secret service OMS (Russian: Otdel meschdunarodnych swjasei). In this position, he oversaw the global expansion of AI activities and has become a huge influence over the years.

Victim of the Great Terror

In the mid-1930s, Pyatnitsky criticized the new alliance policy of the communist parties promoted under Georgi Dimitrov . At the behest of the Communist International (KI), or more precisely: at the behest of the CPSU, against the background of expansive fascist movements in Europe, these should work on establishing popular front governments, i.e. alliances that go far beyond the cooperation of left workers' parties in a country (→ united front ) should go out.

Stalin became more and more suspicious of the Communist International and initiated a radical restructuring of its leadership at the Seventh AI Congress in 1935; Pyatnitsky was no longer represented in the ECCI after this congress. Instead, he became the head of a new control department in the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Due to the lack of relevant evidence in the minutes, it is not certain whether Pyatnitsky gave a speech at the Central Committee plenum in June 1937, which sharply accused the repression of unpleasant party members and Comintern functionaries. Despite clear warnings and requests from leading Communist Party officials, Pyatnitsky did not withdraw his criticism at this plenum. Nikolai Jeschow , the head of the NKVD , then called him a former tsarist spy the following day. Capitalist powers had used it to subvert the Communist International. The plenary passed a vote of no confidence in Pyatnitsky with three abstentions - one of the abstentions came from Lenin's widow Nadezhda Krupskaya .

After the plenary session, Pyatnitsky awaited his arrest, which Yezhov finally carried out personally on July 7, 1937. On July 5, 1937, Pyatnitsky had already been expelled from the party.

He was initially imprisoned in Butyrka Prison . Witnesses reported traces of torture they observed on Pyatnitsky. On April 10, 1938, he was transferred to Lefortowo Prison .

On July 27, 1938, the Supreme Soviet's military tribunal opened the trial against Pyatnitsky and 137 other people. Pyatnitsky is one of the leaders of a fascist spy ring of Trotskyists and deviants from the law . On a list that lists the names of all 138 defendants, there is a short handwritten instruction by Josef Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov to shoot all those listed.

On October 30, 1938, Pyatnitsky was finally executed. After the XX. CPSU party congress (1956) he was rehabilitated.

family

In 1920 he met Julia Iosifowna Sokolowa, then 21 years old. The staunch communist came from a Russian-Polish family, her mother was a Polish nobleman. The two became a couple and married. The connection resulted in two sons (Igor, born 1921 and Wladimir, born 1925).

The Stalinist terror was also directed against the Pyatnitskis family. His son Igor was arrested on February 9, 1938 and subsequently sentenced to five years in a camp. In 1941 the organs of state power extended this sentence for another five years. In 1948 he returned to Leningrad, only to be arrested and sentenced again soon afterwards - his five-year detention in the camp was extended to eight years.

On October 27, 1938, the authorities arrested Yulia Pyatnitskaya. She was also sentenced to prison, initially in Kandalaksha camp . In March 1939 she was denounced there and sentenced to five years in a camp in Karlag in Karaganda ( Kazakhstan ). She died there of exhaustion in December 1940.

Vladimir Pyatnitsky was finally sent to the NKVD internment camp in Danilov Monastery . From there, children of " enemies of the people " were sent to orphanages throughout the Soviet Union.

literature

Fonts (selection)

  • What did the fascists give the German workers? Prometheus Publishing House 1934
  • The fascist dictatorship in Germany. Moscow / Leningrad 1934
    • as camouflage: The mysterious skeleton. by Pitt Strong publishing house Freya: Heidenau near Dresden 1934
  • Notes of a Bolshevik. Memories from the years 1896–1917. Publishing house for literature and politics: Vienna, Berlin 1927 (translation of the first publication Moscow 1925)
    • Reprint of the 1930 edition: Notes of a Bolshevik. Memories from the years 1896–1917. Oberbaum-Verlag: Berlin 1972
    • Translation of the Russian editions of 1936/1969: Code name Friday: Notes of a Bolshevik. with a foreword to Wilhelm Pieck's speech of January 30, 1932: Comrade Pyantnitski on his 50th birthday. Dietz-Verlag Berlin 1984

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wladislaw Hedeler (Ed.): Stalinscher Terror 1934-41. A research balance sheet, Basisdruck, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-86163-127-X , p. 356.
  2. ↑ Figes, Whisperer , p. 343.
  3. ↑ Figes, Flüsterer , p. 344 f.
  4. ↑ Figes, Whisperer , p. 345
  5. ↑ On this Figes, Flüsterer , pp. 346-348. In his remarks, Figes refers, among other things, to references from the Pyatnitski family.
  6. ↑ Figes, Flüsterer , pp. 348-349.
  7. ↑ Figes, Flüsterer , p. 455.
  8. ↑ Figes, Flüsterer , p. 455 f.
  9. ↑ Figes, Flüsterer , pp. 341 and 343.
  10. ↑ Figes, Flüsterer , p. 452.
  11. ↑ Figes, Flüsterer , p. 458.
  12. ↑ Information about this Gulag camp on the Memorial website .
  13. ↑ Figes, whisperer , pp 458-461.
  14. ↑ Figes, Flüsterer , p. 459.

Web links

Commons : Ossip Aronowitsch Pjatnitski  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Pyatnitsky, Osip Aronovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Пятницкий, Осип Аронович (Russian spelling); Пятницкий, Иосиф
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet politician and member of the Presidium of the Communist International
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilkomir
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1938