Roman Wazlawowitsch Malinowski

Roman Malinowski, 1913

Roman Malinovsky ( Russian Роман Вацлавович Малиновский ; born March 6 ^{. Jul} / 18th March  1876 ^greg. , † 5. November 1918 in Moscow ) was a Russian revolutionary, politician and agent of the Tsarist secret police Okhrana .

Life

Malinowski was sentenced to imprisonment for burglary in 1899. From 1901 to 1905 he served in the Russian army .

In 1906 Malinovsky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and was active in the Saint Petersburg Metalworkers Union . In 1910 Malinowski was arrested by the tsarist police, the Ochrana. He agreed to spy for the Ochrana and infiltrate the Bolsheviks . Released from prison soon afterwards, he made a career in the party, to whose central committee he was accepted in 1912 with the support of Lenin . A little later he was elected to the Duma by the Moscow Governorate's Workers' Election Committee, where he led a group of six Bolshevik MPs. In addition, he worked for the police and, with the information he provided to the Okhrana, contributed to the banishment of many leading Bolsheviks, such as Jakow Sverdlov and Josef Stalin, to Siberia . When Malinowski was accused by the Menshevik Julius Martov of working as a secret agent in 1913 , Lenin took Malinowski under protection and stood by him.

In 1914 Malinowski's true identity was finally revealed and he went into exile in Germany . When the First World War broke out , he was interned there in a prisoner of war camp. Lenin is said to have stood by him and sent him clothes.

When he tried to rejoin his old party in Petrograd in 1918, he was recognized by Grigory Zinoviev , after a short trial he was convicted as a traitor and executed by a firing squad .

According to the historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore , the Malinowski case is said to have increased the Soviets' fear of secret infiltration by their enemies, which was later used as an occasion for the Red Terror . The Okhrana achieved a great success with the placement of a secret agent in the inner circle of the Bolsheviks, which was comparable to the recruitment of the Social Revolutionary Yevno Asef .

literature

• Ralph Carter Elwood: Roman Malinovsky, a life without a cause , Oriental Research Partners, 1977
• Simon Sebag Montefiore: Young Stalin , 2007
• Bertram Wolfe: Three who made a revolution , 1948