Boris Nicolaevsky
Boris Ivanovich Nicolaevsky (
Biography
Early years
Boris Nicolaevsky was born on October 20, 1887
Political career
Following the
Nicolaevsky settled in Berlin, where he was a member of the Foreign Delegation of the Menshevik party, and established himself as one of the leading historians of Soviet communism. He was associated with the Marx-Engels Institute there, before becoming the director of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, repository of the archives of the Socialist International.[2]
Many individuals of all political complexions confided their archival treasures to him.
In June 1933, Nicolaevsky moved to Paris, to avoid living under Nazi rule. In March 1936, he had several long meetings with Nikolai Bukharin, who had been sent by Joseph Stalin to negotiate the purchase original manuscripts by Karl Marx, which Nicolaevsky had smuggled out of Germany. Their conversations stretched through two months, and formed the basis of Nicolaevsky's Letter of an Old Bolshevik,[4] which Bukharin's biographer described as "a remarkable document and the source of much of our knowledge about Soviet politics in the thirties".[5] But years later, Bukharin's widow, who was with her husband in Paris, denounced the Letter as a "fraud", and denied that Bukharin had ever spoke to Nicolaevsky, except in the presence of witnesses.[6] She was angry because Nicolaevsky had put her husband in danger. When Bukharin was on trial in March 1938, he was forced to confess that he had conducted "counter-revolutionary conversations" with Nicolaevsky.[7] The negotiations failed because Stalin refused to accept the price demanded by Nicolaevsky.
Early in November 1936, Leon Trotsky's son, Lev Sedov and a collaborator named Mark Zborowski, aka 'Etienne', handed over a batch of Trotsky's papers to Nicolaevsky, to be stored at his premises at 7, rue Michelet, Paris. Less than a week later, burglars broke in and stole the papers, leaving money and valuables untouched. When questioned by the French police, Sedov asserted that the theft must have been carried out by the NKVD. He suspected that Nicolaevsky had accidentally alerted them through careless talk. In fact, Zborowski was later exposed as an NKVD agent.[8]
Nicolaevsky is the author of the book Karl Marx: Man and Fighter, first published in
Nicolaevsky also wrote "Forced Labour in Soviet Russia", with
His other works included Power and the Soviet Elite and Aseff the Spy. He also wrote an essay "On the History of the Bolshevik Centre" and an unfinished biography of Georgy Malenkov.
Nicolaevsky emigrated to the United States in 1942, where he remained until his death, lecturing at various American universities and serving as the curator of the
Family
Nicolaevsky's brother, Vladimir, was married to the sister of Alexei Rykov, who was head of the Soviet government in 1924-30.
Death and legacy
Nicolaevsky died on February 21, 1966, in
Footnotes
- JSTOR 126978. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
- ^ a b c d e "Boris Nicolaevsky," New America, [New York], vol. 5, no. 17 (March 26, 1966), pg. 2.
- ^ "Николаевский Борис Иванович (1887)". Открытый список (Open List). Retrieved 12 February 2022.
- ^ The Letter was published, in translation, in Nicolaevsky, Boris (1965). Power and the Soviet Elite. New York: Praeger.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ISBN 0-394-71261-7.
- ISBN 0-04-440887-0.
- ^ Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet 'Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites'. Moscow: People's Commissariat of Justice of the USSR. 1938. p. 427.
- ^ Deutscher, Isaac (1963). The Prophet Outcast, Trotsky 1929-1940. London: Oxford U.P. pp. 348–49.
Further reading
- Ladis K. D. Kristof: Russian Review, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Jul 1966), pp. 324–327. JSTOR link
External links
- Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection at the Hoover Institution Archives
- Biography, photo (in Russian)