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35-606: Born in 1878 in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of Ukraine in the Russian Empire to a Jewish family (of possibly Sephardic lineage) he said at his trial near the end of his life that "my father was a Hebrew teacher . He knew Talmud ... and wrote poetry in Hebrew. My mother was illiterate. My father taught me to read Hebrew, to pray, and to read Russian." Having left school at 11, he returned to complete his education at

70-475: A highly edited form. Following the release of the documents, it also emerged that Nikita Khrushchev issued a posthumous pardon to Lozovsky and to all executed members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist committee, stating that the trials were conducted in "flagrant violations of the law". Yekaterinoslav Governorate Yekaterinoslav Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit ( guberniya ) of

105-468: A huge area of the southern Ukraine. Officially, the new governorate was created as Ekaterinoslav Governorate in 1802 and subdivided into the following uyezds with centres in: List of okruhas of Ukraine upon the dissolution of the Governorate: The governorate's population, a majority of peasants, was 662,000 in 1811, 902,400 in 1851, 1,204,800 in 1863, and 1,792,800 in 1885. From the second half of

140-540: A verdict of guilty, on 18 July 1952, Cheptsov refused to order that the death sentences be carried out immediately, he forwarded an appeal for clemency to Stalin, which was rejected. Lozovsky was executed on 12 August 1952, together with thirteen other members of Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee , in an event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets . The stenographic report of the trial was published only in 1994 and then only in

175-521: The Bolshevik revolution , published a personal credo, a series of statements each beginning "I cannot, in the name of party discipline stay silent..." Each statement was a protest against an aspect of the embryonic dictatorship - official lawlessness, arbitrary arrests, conscription, one-party rule etc. He wanted the Bolsheviks to form a coalition with other socialist parties, and protested at the dissolution of

210-623: The Central Council of the Soviet trade unions and in the executive of the Comintern . When Mikhail Tomsky and other union leaders came out in opposition to the forced industrialisation drive inaugurated by Josif Stalin , Lozovsky was the only member of the council to support Stalin uncritically. He was equally loyal to the party line after the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, at a time (early 1930s) when

245-743: The Fourth All Russian Conference of Trade Unions (12–17 March), where he moved a resolution concerning the Relations between the Trade Unions and the Commissariat for Labour which stated that the October Revolution had changed "the meaning and character of state organs and significance of proletarian organs as well". It was elaborated that previously the old ministry of Labour had acted as arbitrator between Labour and Capital , whereas

280-625: The Mensheviks - an approach which brought him into conflict with Lenin . By 1914 he had either left or been expelled by the Bolsheviks, and his closest political links were with the left wing of the French Socialist Party . He rejoined the Bolsheviks in June 1917, after his return to Russia. Even after rejoining the party, Lozovsky retained an independent position as secretary of the central trade union council, and on 17 November 1917, ten days after

315-725: The NKVD in August 1936. Mikhail Tomsky was born in Kolpino , Saint Petersburg Governorate in a lower-middle-class family of Russian ethnicity. Tomsky moved to Estonia (then part of the Russian Empire ) and was involved in the 1905 Revolution . He helped form the Revel Soviet of Workers' Deputies and the Revel Union of Metal Workers. Tomsky was arrested and deported to Siberia . He escaped and returned to St. Petersburg where he became president of

350-675: The Novorossiya Governorate was split into three governorates. The Yekaterinoslav Governorate bordered to the north with the Kharkov Governorate and Poltava Governorate , to the west and southwest with the Kherson Governorate , to the south with the Taurida Governorate and Sea of Azov , and to the east with Don Host Oblast . The governorate was created in place of Novorossiysk Governorate in 1802 and encompassed

385-560: The Russian Constituent Assembly and, later, against the decision to sign a peace treaty with Germany . On 11 January 1918, he became the first prominent member to be expelled from the Russian Communist Party. He was removed from the central council of trade unions , but taken on as secretary of the textile workers' union. He joined and led the tiny International Social Democratic Party . When he tried to speak at

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420-506: The Russian Empire , with its capital in Yekaterinoslav . It bordered Poltava Governorate to the north, Don Host Oblast to the east, Sea of Azov to the southeast, Taurida Governorate to the south, and Kherson Governorate to the east, and covered the area of the Luhansk , Donetsk , Dnipropetrovsk , and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts of modern Ukraine. The government was created in 1802 when

455-512: The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1904 and eventually join the Bolshevik faction of the party. After the revolution , Tomsky was associated with the right wing faction of the party headed by Nikolai Bukharin and Alexey Rykov , a group seeking orderly planning, a moderate tempo of industrialization, and eschewing rapid and forced collectivization of agriculture. Tomsky's primary bailiwick revolved around

490-674: The United Opposition — led by Leon Trotsky , Lev Kamenev , and Grigory Zinoviev — from the Party during the struggle that followed Lenin 's death in 1924. In 1928 Stalin moved against his former allies, defeating Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky at the April 1929 Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee and forcing Tomsky to resign from his position as leader of the trade union movement in May 1929. Tomsky

525-572: The 19th century, with the founding of Yuzovka (Donetsk), the governorate became the coal-mining and metallurgical center of the then Ukraine , incorporating the Dnieper Industrial Region and the Donbass ( Donets Basin ) . Its population increased to 2,113,674 by 1897. The nationalities within the governorate were Ukrainians – 68.9% , Russians – 17.3% , Jews ( 4.7% ), Germans ( 3.8% ), Greeks ( 2.3% ), and Tatars ( 0.8% ). In 1924,

560-649: The Union of Engravers and Chromolithographers. Tomsky was arrested in 1908 and then exiled to France , but returned to Russia in 1909 where he was again arrested for his political activities and sentenced to five years of hard labour. He was freed by the Provisional Government after the February Revolution in 1917 and moved to Moscow where he participated in the October Revolution . In 1918 he attended

595-460: The age of 20, served two years in the army (1901–1903), and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in Yekaterinoslav in 1901. He spent two years organising railway workers. As was common for members of the underground movements of the time, he adopted a pseudonym, "Lozovsky" (from the town Lozovaya , near Kharkov , Ukraine). He moved to Saint Petersburg in August 1903, but

630-840: The borders of the Soviet Union . Lozovsky advised that the best location would be Crimea , and helped Mikhoels draft a written appeal to the Kremlin in February 1944. After the proclamation of the state of Israel (14 May 1948), Stalin interpreted this talk as a Jewish conspiracy, and ordered the police to organise a show trial , with Lozovsky as the main defendant. He was arrested on 26 January 1949, and tortured. Despite incredible pressure and despite being over 70 years old, Lozovsky never admitted guilt or accused others. The closed trial lasted for two-and-a-half months (May to July 1952), during which Lozovsky's testimony shone "out of this primordial darkness as

665-475: The communists were denouncing the social democrats as "social fascists" . His children were equally reliable Stalinists . His older daughter was assigned to keep watch over the family of the Old Bolshevik Gleb Krzhizhanovsky , and his younger daughter, Vera Dridzo, was appointed to guard Nadezhda Krupskaya , the widow of Vladimir Lenin , so that "every line Krupskaya wrote about Lenin or

700-722: The foreign press. In this capacity, he became a familiar figure to Western correspondents based in Moscow, one of whom wrote that "with a smooth, cosmopolitan veneer...and with his barbiche and carefully cut clothes, (he) looked rather like an old boulevardier , whom one could well imagine on the terrace of the Napolitain during la belle epoque ". In 1941, upon being told of foreign news reports that German soldiers could see Moscow with their binoculars, Lozovsky famously retorted: "the Germans would undoubtedly see Moscow, but as prisoners of war ." He

735-452: The governorate had 3,424,100 ( 13.6% urban ) inhabitants, living in 5,165 settlements, 36 of them being cities and urban-type settlements . The largest social class was that of workers ( about 25% ). The data is taken from demoscope.ru. Here is also the most common language composition. From the turn of the 19th century until 1887 city of Rostov-na-Donu and all the Taganrog uyezd were part of

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770-600: The governorate, but before the census of 1897 took place they were transferred to the Don oblast . Note that the biggest city of the guberniya was the city of Rostov-na-Donu while Taganrog was not much smaller and the third in size. Here is the data on them: 48°27′00″N 34°59′00″E  /  48.4500°N 34.9833°E  / 48.4500; 34.9833 Mikhail Tomsky Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky ( Russian: Михаи́л Па́влович То́мский), born Mikhail Pavlovich Yefremov ( Russian: Ефре́мов) (31 October 1880 – 22 August 1936)

805-492: The most remarkable and moving oration of dignity and courage in all of Stalin's trials." The skill with which he destroyed the prosecution caused the judge, Alexander Cheptsov  [ ru ] , to interrupt the trial for a week, twice, to ensure and appeal for the investigation to be reopened - something that never happened in any other political trial during the Stalin years. Even after he had carried out his instruction to return

840-637: The new Commissariat was the champion of the economic policy of the working class. He was elected to the Central Committee in March 1919, to its Orgburo in 1921 and to the Politburo in April 1922. Tomsky was an ally of Nikolai Bukharin and Alexey Rykov , who led the moderate (or right) wing of the Communist Party in the 1920s. Together, they were allied with Joseph Stalin 's faction and helped him purge

875-415: The obvious choice for general secretary, even if he cut an incongruous figure among the trade-union representatives from the west. Victor Serge remembered him as having "the air of a slightly fastidious schoolmaster amidst his world-wide assortment of trade union militants whose political horizons did not extend very far beyond their own working-class districts at home". He also held ex officio positions on

910-464: The party had to pass through the fine sieve of Vera Solomonovna's vigilance". Krupskaya called her "my gendarme". Solomon Lozovsky's grandson, Vladimir Shamberg, married Volya Malenkova, daughter of Georgy Malenkov (but was forced by Malenkov to divorce her in January 1949). The Profintern was wound up in 1937, when the communist policy changed to advocating a united front against fascism , and Lozovsky

945-697: The trade union congress in January 1919, to protest at the stifling of union independence, the communists shouted him down. He rejoined the Bolshevik Party in December 1919, and never publicly questioned the party line again. When, in July 1920, the communist authorities in Moscow decided to create the Red International Labour Union ( Profintern ), Lozovsky's experience in the French trade-union movement made him

980-579: The trade union movement, of which he was the head and spokesman in the 1920s. An orientation towards trade union autonomy placed him in opposition to party radicals seeking rapid collectivization and strict party control over trade unions, leading to his downfall in 1928. Tomsky was implicated in the investigation preceding the First Moscow Trial of 1936, an event which inaugurated the Great Purge . He would subsequently commit suicide to avoid arrest by

1015-643: Was a factory worker, trade unionist , and Soviet politician. He was the Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in the 1920s. In his youth, Tomsky worked at the Smirnov Engineering factory in St. Petersburg , but was eventually dismissed from that job for attempting to organise a trade union . His labour activities radicalized him politically and led him to become a socialist and join

1050-458: Was accused of terrorist connections during the First Moscow Trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev. Rather than face arrest by the NKVD , Tomsky committed suicide by gunshot in his dacha in Bolshevo , near Moscow . Before committing suicide, he told his wife to tell the investigators that it was Genrikh Yagoda who drove him to the path of opposition, which was later found by Nikolai Yezhov . Tomsky

1085-599: Was also a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee , organised as a part of Sovinformburo, which sought to influence international public opinion and to organise political and material support for the war campaign, especially amongst Jews in Allied countries. From 1945 to 1948 chaired the Sovinformburo. In 1943, the actor Solomon Mikhoels and others began pushing for the formation of a Jewish homeland within

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1120-521: Was appointed Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs , tasked with handling the Far East and Scandinavia . From 1939 to 1949 he was the oldest member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . During World War II ( Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945) he served as the vice-chairman of Sovinformburo , tasked with handling all the information flow from the Soviet battlefronts to

1155-704: Was arrested soon after his arrival, and held in prison without trial for a year, before being exiled to Kazan . While in exile, in November 1904, he learnt about the split in the RSDLP , and joined the Bolsheviks . He was arrested in October 1905 for taking part in a raid on Kazan police station, released after three weeks, re-arrested in Saint Petersburg in December, then arrested twice in quick succession after escaping to Kharkov. He

1190-447: Was in prison from July 1906 to May 1908, but escaaped during deportation to Irkutsk. He spent the period from 1908 to 1917 in Paris, where at different times he ran an employment bureau for Russian émigrés, an adult school for electricians, a bakers' co-operative, and a garage. During this time he was a prominent Bolshevik "conciliator", who wanted to reunite all factions of the RSDLP, including

1225-484: Was put in charge of the Soviet chemical industry, a position which he occupied until 1930. He was not re-elected to the Politburo after the 16th Communist Party Congress in July 1930, but remained a full member of the Central Committee until the next Congress in January 1934, when he was demoted to candidate (non-voting) member. Tomsky headed the State Publishing House from May 1932 until August 1936, when he

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