Felix Dzerzhinsky

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Edmundovich and the family name is Dzerzhinsky.
Felix Dzerzhinsky
Феликс Дзержинский
6th Secretariat
In office
6 August 1917 – 8 March 1918
Personal details
Born
Feliks Dzierżyński

11 September [
LSDP
(1896–1900)
  • SDKP (1895–1896)
    • Spouse
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1910)​
    ChildrenJan Feliksovich [ru]
    Signature

    Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (Russian: Феликс Эдмундович Дзержинский;

    Soviet regime. He was one of the architects of the Red Terror[2][3] and de-Cossackization.[4][5]

    Born to a Polish family of noble descent in the

    Bolshevik party and played an active role in the October Revolution
    that brought the Bolsheviks to power.

    In December 1917, Lenin named Dzerzhinsky head of the newly established All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Cheka), tasking him with the suppression of counter-revolutionary activities in Soviet Russia. The Russian Civil War saw the expansion of the Cheka's authority, inaugurating a campaign of mass executions known as the Red Terror. The Cheka was reorganized as the State Political Directorate (GPU) in 1922 and then the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) a year later, with Dzerzhinsky remaining head of the powerful organization. In addition, he served as director of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy (VSNKh) from 1924.

    Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack in 1926. He became widely celebrated in the Soviet Union, Poland and other communist countries in the following decades, with numerous places (including the city of Dzerzhinsk) named in his honour, and is among the few Soviet figures to be buried in an individual tomb in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. Meanwhile, he also became a prominent symbol of repression and brutality to critics of the Soviet regime.

    Early life

    Samson coat of arms belonging to Felix's szlachta family[6]

    Felix Dzerzhinsky was born on 11 September 1877 to ethnically

    Ivyanets in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Belarus).[7] In the Russian Empire, his family was of a type known as "column-listed nobility" (Russian: столбовое дворянство, stolbovoe dvorianstvo),[8] whose nobility was formally acknowledged, but so old that they did not enjoy the privileges of the new nobility.[9] His sister Wanda died at the age of 12, when she was accidentally shot with a hunting rifle on the family estate by one of her brothers. At the time of the incident, there were conflicting claims as to whether Felix or his brother Stanisław was responsible for the accident.[10]

    His father, Edmund-Rufin Dzierżyński graduated from the

    Rakaŭ. In 1882, Felix's father died from tuberculosis.[11]

    As a youngster Dzerzhinsky became a polyglot, speaking:

    Catholic faith, along with a satisfactory attention and satisfactory diligence showed the following successes in sciences, namely: Divine law—"good"; Logic, Latin, Algebra, Geometry, Mathematical geography, Physics, History (of Russia), French—"satisfactory"; Russian and Greek—"unsatisfactory".[13]

    Political affiliations and arrests

    Two months before he expected to graduate, the gymnasium expelled Dzerzhinsky for "revolutionary activity" and for posting signs with socialist slogans at the school. He had joined a

    which?] in favor of national autonomy. On 18 March 1897, he was sent to Kaunas to take advantage of the arrest of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) branch. He worked in a book-binding factory and set up an illegal press.[15] As an organizer of a shoemakers' strike, Dzerzhinsky was arrested for "criminal agitation among the Kaunas workers"; the police files from this time state: "Felix Dzerzhinsky, considering his views, convictions and personal character, will be very dangerous in the future, capable of any crime."[16] Dzerzhinsky envisioned merging the LSDP with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and took the same position as influential Social Democrat Rosa Luxemburg on what was referred to in contemporary writings as "The National Question," i.e., the right of nations to self determination.[17]

    He was arrested on a denunciation for his revolutionary activities for the first time in 1897, after which he served almost a year in the Kaunas prison. In 1898, Dzerzhinsky was exiled for three years to the Vyatka Governorate (city of Nolinsk) where he worked at a local tobacco factory. There Dzerzhinsky was arrested for agitating for revolutionary activities and was sent 500 versts (330 mi) north to the village of Kaigorod [ru]. In August 1899, he returned to Vilnius. Dzerzhinsky subsequently became one of the founders of Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (Polish: Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy, SDKPiL) in 1899. In February 1900, he was arrested again and served his time at first in the Alexander Citadel in Warsaw and later at the Siedlce prison. In 1902, Dzerzhinsky was sent deep into Siberia for the next five years to the remote town of Vilyuysk, while en route being temporarily held at the Alexandrovsk Transitional Prison near Irkutsk. While in exile, he escaped on a boat and later emigrated from the country. He traveled to Berlin, where at the SDKPiL conference Dzerzhinsky was elected a secretary of its party committee abroad (Polish: Komitet Zagraniczny, KZ) and met with several prominent leaders of the Polish Social Democratic movement, including Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. They gained control of the party organization through the creation of a committee called the Komitet Zagraniczny (KZ), which dealt with the party's foreign relations. As secretary of the KZ, Dzerzhinsky was able to dominate the SDKPiL. In Berlin, he organized publication of the newspaper Czerwony Sztandar ("Red Banner"), and transportation of illegal literature from Kraków into Congress Poland. Being a delegate to the IV Congress of SDKPiL in 1903, Dzerzhinsky was elected as a member of its General Board.

    Dzerzhinsky visited Switzerland, where his fiancée Julia Goldman, the sister of Boris Gorev, was undergoing treatment for tuberculosis. She died in his arms on 4 June 1904. Her illness and death depressed him – in letters to his sister, Dzerzhinsky explained that he no longer saw any meaning for his life. That changed with the Russian Revolution of 1905, as Dzerzhinsky became involved with work again. After the revolution failed he was again jailed in July 1905, this time by the Okhrana. In October, he was released on amnesty. As a delegate to the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in Stockholm, Dzerzhinsky entered the central body of the party. From July through September 1906, he lived in Saint Petersburg and then returned to Warsaw, where he was arrested again in December of the same year. In June 1907, Dzerzhinsky was released on bail. At the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in London in May–June 1907, he was elected in absentia as a member of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. In April 1908, Dzerzhinsky was arrested once again in Warsaw and again exiled to Siberia (Yeniseysk Governorate) in 1909. As before, Dzerzhinsky managed to escape (by November 1909). In 1910, he reached Italy, where he met Maxim Gorky on Capri; he then returned to Poland.

    Back in

    Zofia Muszkat, who was already pregnant. A month later she was arrested; she gave birth to their son Janek in Pawiak prison. In 1911, Zofia was sentenced to permanent Siberian exile, and she left the child with her father. Dzerzhinsky saw his son for the first time in March 1912 in Warsaw. In attending the welfare of his child, Dzerzhinsky repeatedly exposed himself to the danger of arrest. On one occasion, Dzerzhinsky narrowly escaped an ambush that the police had prepared at the apartment of his father-in-law.[18]

    Dzerzhinsky pictured with wife Sofia and son Janek in Lugano (Switzerland), October 1918

    Dzerzhinsky continued to direct the Social Democratic Party (SDKPiL), while considering his continued freedom "only a game of the Okhrana". The Okhrana, however, was not playing a game; Dzerzhinsky simply was a master of conspiratorial techniques and was therefore extremely difficult to find. A police file from this time says: "Dzerzhinsky continued to lead the Social Democratic party and at the same time he directed party work in Warsaw, led strikes, published appeals to workers, and traveled on party matters to Łódź and Kraków." The police were unable to arrest Dzerzhinsky until the end of 1912, when they found the apartment where he lived in the name of Władysław Ptasiński.[19]

    Revolution

    Dzerzhinsky spent the next 4+1⁄2 years in prisons, first at the notorious

    Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel. When World War I began in 1914, all political prisoners were relocated from Warsaw into Russia proper. Dzerzhinsky was taken to Oryol Prison. He was very concerned about the fate of his wife and son, with whom he did not have any communication. Moreover, the Russian guards administered Dzerzhinsky frequent beatings, which caused permanent disfigurement of his jaw and mouth. In 1916, Dzerzhinsky was transferred to the Moscow Butyrka prison, where he was soon hospitalized because the chains that he had been forced to wear were causing severe cramps in his legs. Despite the prospects of amputation, Dzerzhinsky recovered and was put to work sewing military uniforms.[20]

    Dzerzhinsky was freed from Butyrka after the

    Bolshevik party, writing to his comrades that "the Bolshevik party organization is the only Social Democratic organization of the proletariat, and if we were to stay outside of it, then we would find ourselves outside the proletarian revolutionary struggle." By April, he had entered the Moscow Committee of the Bolsheviks and soon thereafter was elected to the executive committee of the Moscow Soviet. Dzerzhinsky endorsed Vladimir Lenin's "April Theses", demanding uncompromising opposition to the new Russian Provisional Government, the transfer of all political authority to the Soviets, and the immediate withdrawal of Russia from the war. Dzerzhinsky's brother Stanisław was murdered on the Dzerzhinsky estate by deserting Russian soldiers that same year.[21][22]

    Subsequently, in late July, Dzerzhinsky was subsequently elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee at the Sixth Party Congress. He then relocated from Moscow to

    Petrograd to begin his new responsibilities. In Petrograd, Dzerzhinsky participated in the crucial session of the Central Committee in October, and he strongly endorsed Lenin's demands for the immediate preparation of a coup, after which Felix Dzerzhinsky had an active role with the Military Revolutionary Committee during the October Revolution. With the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, Dzerzhinsky eagerly assumed responsibility for making security arrangements at the Smolny Institute where the Bolsheviks had their headquarters.[23]

    Director of Cheka

    Lenin regarded Felix Dzerzhinsky as a revolutionary hero and appointed him to organize a force to combat internal threats. On 20 December 1917, the

    internal security troops
    to enforce the Cheka's authority.

    The Cheka became notorious for mass

    Vesenkha
    (Supreme Council of National Economy) in 1921–24. Indeed, while the (O)GPU was theoretically supposed to act with more restraint than the Cheka, in time its de facto powers grew even greater than those of the Cheka.

    Dzerzhinsky in 1922

    At his office in

    Lubyanka, Dzerzhinsky kept a portrait of fellow Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg on the wall.[29] Besides his leadership of the secret police, Dzerzhinsky also took on a number of other roles; he led the fight against typhus in 1918, was chair of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs from 1919 to 1923, initiated a vast orphanage construction program,[30] chaired the Transport Commissariat, organized the embalming of Lenin's body in 1924 and chaired the Society of Friends of Soviet Cinema.[31]

    Dzerzhinsky and Lenin

    Kharkov, Ukrainian SSR
    , 1926

    Dzerzhinsky became a Bolshevik as late as 1917. Therefore, it was wrong to assert (as official Soviet historians did subsequently) that Dzerzhinsky had been one of Lenin's oldest and most reliable comrades, or that Lenin had exercised some sort of spellbinding influence on Dzerzhinsky and the SDKPiL. Lenin and Dzerzhinsky frequently had opposing opinions about many important ideological and political issues of the pre-revolutionary period, and also after the October Revolution. After 1917, Dzerzhinsky would oppose Lenin on such crucial issues as the

    better source needed
    ]

    From 1917 to his death in 1926, Dzerzhinsky was first and foremost a Russian Communist, and Dzerzhinsky's involvement in the affairs of the Polish Communist Party (which was founded in 1918) was minimal. The energy and dedication that had previously been responsible for the building of the SDKPiL would henceforth be devoted to the priorities of the struggle for Bolshevik power in Russia, to the defence of the revolution during the civil war, and eventually, to the tasks of socialist construction.[33]

    A statue of Dzerzhinsky in Warsaw built in 1951. It was toppled in 1989 to mark the end of the communist era in Poland.

    Death and legacy

    Dzerzhinsky honoured on a 1951 stamp
    Dzerzhinsky's tomb in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis
    A Soviet postcard featuring Dzerzhinsky as a national hero on the 100th anniversary of his birth, 1977

    Dzerzhinsky died of a

    Kremlin Wall
    .

    Dzerzhinsky was succeeded as chairman of the OGPU by Vyacheslav Menzhinsky.

    Polish Autonomous Districts in the Soviet Union, was named to commemorate Dzerzhinsky. Located in Belarus, near Minsk and close to the Soviet-Polish border of the time, it was created on 15 March 1932, with the capital at Dzyarzhynsk (in Russian Dzerzhynsk, formerly known as Kojdanów), not far from the family estate. The Dzerzhinsky estate itself remained inside Poland from 1921 to the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. The district was disbanded in 1935 at the onset of the Great Purge
    , and most of its administration was executed.

    Dzyarzhynskaya Hara (the highest point in Belarus), located near Dzyarzhynsk was named after Dzerzhinsky in 1958.

    His name and image were used widely throughout the KGB and the Soviet Union and other communist countries; there were numerous places named after him. In

    FD class steam locomotive
    .

    During the

    end of Communism in Poland. The square was subsequently renamed Plac Bankowy (Bank Square).[39]

    Iron Felix

    Main article: Monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, Moscow
    Picture of Dzerzhinsky at a parade in Moscow's Red Square, 1936

    A 15-ton iron monument of Dzerzhinsky, which once dominated the

    coup d'état attempt by hard-line Communist members of the government. A mock-up of the removal of Dzerzhinsky's statue can be found in the entrance hall of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

    The figure of Dzerzhinsky remains controversial in Russian society. Between 1999 and 2013, six proposals called for the return of the statue to its plinth. The Monument Art Commission of the

    VTsIOM poll, 46% of Russians favour the restoration of the statue to the Lubyanka Square, with 17% opposing it.[41] The statue remained in a yard for old Soviet memorials at the Central House of Artists.[42]

    In April 2012, the Moscow authorities stated that they would renovate the "Iron Felix" monument in full and put the statue on a list of monuments to be renovated, as well as officially designating it an object of cultural heritage.[43] On 26 April 2021, it was announced by the prosecutor office of Moscow that the removal of the statue had no legal basis and was therefore illegal.[44]

    Finally, the monument was reerected on September 11, 2023, but this time in front of the

    Russian Foreign Intelligence Service headquarters outside Moscow.[45]

    Other statues

    A smaller bust of Dzerzhinsky in the courtyard of the Moscow police headquarters at Petrovka 38 was restored in November 2005 (police officers had removed this bust on 22 August 1991).[citation needed]

    A 10-foot bronze replica of the original Iron Felix statue was placed on the grounds of the military academy in Minsk, Belarus, in May 2006.[46]

    In 2017, on the 140th anniversary of Dzerzhinsky's birth, a monument to Dzerzhinsky was erected in the city of Ryazan, Russia.[47]

    On 20 January 2017, the People's Public Security Academy in Hanoi, Vietnam, inaugurated a Dzerzhinsky statue.

    Dzerzhinovo

    A bust of Dzerzhinsky in front of his birthplace

    In 1943, the manor house of Dzerzhinovo, where Dzerzhinsky was born, was destroyed and family members (including Dzerzhinsky's brother Kazimierz) were killed by the Germans, because of their support for the

    Polish Home Army. In 2005, the Government of Belarus rebuilt the house (now on Belarusian territory) and established a museum. The graduating class of the KGB academy holds its annual swearing-in at the manor.[48][22]

    See also

    Notes

    1. ^ Transliteration from Polish: Дзержиньский (Dzierzhinskiy).[1]
    2. ^ In isolation, Feliks is pronounced [ˈfɛliks].

    References

    1. ISBN 9781315401720
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    2. ISBN 978-1-61168-939-6
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    3. ^ Часть IV. На гражданской войнe. // Sergei Melgunov «Красный террор» в России 1918—1923. — 2-ое изд., доп. — Берлин, 1924
    4. ISBN 9781626165236
      . Retrieved 27 May 2019. The Cheka's first mass operation—'Decossackization,' the deportation in April 1919 of an estimated 300,000 people—was more akin to the actions of an invading army than a police measure; it was carried out to secure the southern front against the White armies.
    5. ISBN 9783640797004
      . Retrieved 27 May 2019. In the course of the so called deCossackization, (i.e. the planned annihilation of the Cossacks as a social class) between 300 000 and 500 000 Don Cossacks were killed or deported in the years 1919/20, out of a total population of 3 million ...
    6. ^ Albert P. Nenarokov. Russia in the Twentieth Century. (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1968), 117–118.
    7. ^ Фамилия: Гулухов (in Russian)
    8. ^ Igor Kuznetsov. The Chekist No.1. The life of terror parent (Чекист № 1. Житие отца террора). BelGazeta. 21 July 2020
    9. ^ Грамота на права, вольности и преимущества благородного российского дворянства, 21 апреля 1785 (Полное собрание законов Российской империи, Ч. I, т. XXII, № 16187; п. 82)
    10. ^ Veronika Anatolievna Cherkasova. "Феликс не всегда был железным... (Feliks not always was iron...)". Archived from the original on 15 May 2009. Retrieved 18 September 2009.
    11. ^
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    12. ^ Blobaum 1984, p. 30.
    13. ^ Fedotkina, Tatiana (5 September 1998). Палач Королевства любви [The executioner of the Kingdom of love]. Moskovskij Komsomolets (in Russian). No. 71.
    14. ^ Blobaum 1984, p. 37
    15. ^ Blobaum 1984, p. 42
    16. ^ Blobaum 1984, p. 46.
    17. ^ "Rosa Luxemburg: The Polish Question and the Socialist Movement (1905)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 12 February 2023.
    18. ^ Blobaum 1984, pp. 199–200.
    19. ^ Blobaum 1984, pp. 212–213.
    20. ^ Blobaum 1984, pp. 213–217.
    21. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 November 2013. Retrieved 29 October 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
    22. ^ a b "Krasnyj pomieszczik". magwil.lt. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
    23. ^ Blobaum 1984, pp. 213–222.
    24. ISBN 1-4000-4005-1
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    25. ISBN 0-19-822862-7
      pp. 197–201.
    26. ISBN 0-19-822862-7
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    27. ISBN 0-8133-2323-1
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    28. ISBN 0-19-822862-7
      . p. 114.
    29. ^ Blobaum 1984, p. 231.
    30. ^ "Love and hate for 'Iron Felix': Why do Russians still debate the Soviet security services' founder?". Russia Beyond. Retrieved 20 July 2019. Apart from that, the top Chekist supervised the establishment of a system of orphanages and child communes, which helped to solve the problem of child homelessness, which was very acute after the Civil War.
    31. ^ A Dictionary of 20th Century Communism. Edited by Silvio Pons and Robert Service. Princeton University Press. 2010.
    32. ^ "Leon Trotsky: The History of the Russian Revolution (1.16 Rearming the Party)". Marxists.org. 21 February 2007. Retrieved 22 January 2014.
    33. ^ Blobaum 1984. pp. 230–231.
    34. ISBN 1-85984-446-4
      . p. 279.
    35. ISBN 1842127268
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    36. Ukrayinska Pravda
      (14 July 2016)
    37. UNIAN (4 February 2016)
      "Rada de-communized Artemivsk as well as over hundred cities and villages" (in Ukrainian). Pravda.com.ua. 4 February 2016. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
      Рада перейменувала Дніпродзержинськ на Кам'янське (in Ukrainian). Українські Національні Новини. 19 May 2016. Archived from the original
      on 19 May 2016. Retrieved 19 May 2016.
    38. doi:10.1080/03087298.1979.10441091
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    39. ^ a b Jabłoński, Rafał (26 November 2009). "Utracony nos czekisty". Życie Warszawy (in Polish). Retrieved 15 January 2023.
    40. ^ "Дзержинскому еще раз отказали в месте на Лубянке". BBC. 11 February 2014. Retrieved 22 January 2014.
    41. ^ "Опрос: 45% россиян хотят вернуть памятник Дзержинскому". BBC. 5 December 2013. Retrieved 22 January 2014.
    42. ^ "Центральный дом художника (ЦДХ)". 24 November 2018. Archived from the original on 24 November 2018.
    43. ^ "Russia Plans To Restore Toppled 'Iron Felix' Statue". Ipotnews. 16 April 2012.
    44. ^ "Прокуратура признала незаконным снос памятника Дзержинскому на Лубянке". 26 April 2021.
    45. ^ "Statue of founder of Soviet secret police unveiled in Moscow". theguardian.com. 11 September 2023.
    46. ^ "Belarus: monument to founder of Soviet secret police unveiled in Minsk". Pravda. 26 May 2006.
    47. ^ "In Ryazan, a monument to Dzerzhinsky was opened". (a)news. 11 September 2017.[permanent dead link]
    48. ISBN 978-1-4128-4786-5
      .

    Further reading

    See also: Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War

    External links
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Felix_Dzerzhinsky&oldid=1223461608"