Georgy Safarov
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Georgy Safarov Георгий Сафаров | |
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(1918–1927, 1928–1934) |
Georgy Ivanovich Safarov (Russian: Георгий Иванович Сафаров) (1891 – 27 July 1942) was a
Later he was arrested for his association with the left opposition, and served as an NKVD informant in prison, and gave fabricated evidence against over a hundred of his former comrades, in spite of which, he was executed on 27 July 1942. He is one of only a few victims of Joseph Stalin's purges not posthumously rehabilitated or reinstated to the party after his death when the history of the 1930s was re-examined in the 1980s.
Early life
Safarov was born in
Following the
Following the Bolshevik seizure of power and the outbreak of the Russian Civil War, Safarov backed the Left Communists who opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, wanting to conduct a 'revolutionary war'; against Germany,[5] and backed the Military Opposition, who opposed the recruitment to the Red Army of former officers of the Imperial Army.[6] he was appointed a member of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), also popularly referred to as the Ural Soviet, and worked as editor-in-chief of the party's regional newspaper, the Ural Worker, and served on the editorial board of Pravda, the party's official state newspaper.
The Killing of the Romanovs
On 29 June 1918, Safarov, as a member of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet under
On 18 July, a day after the killings of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg, Safarov traveled to nearby
Later career
In November 1919, Safarov was sent to Turkestan to take part in the suppression of the White Movement and the
In July 1920, Safarov was also appointed a member of the Far Eastern Bureau of
In opposition
Safarov was a political ally of Grigory Zinoviev, who was Chairman of Comintern and head of the communist party in Petrograd (St Petersburg). In 1924, Zinoviev appointed him editor of Petrogrdskaya Pravda, which soon afterwards was renamed Leningradskaya Pravda, when St Petersburg became 'Leningrad'. In November, he wrote a tirade against Zinoviev's rival, Leon Trotsky, entitled Trotskyism or Leninism?, which ran across seven issues of Leningradskaya Pravda.[9] But when a rift opened up between Zinoviev and Joseph Stalin, Safarov backed Zinoviev's faction, and angered Moscow communists by boastfully declaring that Leningrad workers were "the salt of the proletarian earth, who have carried on their shoulders the burden of three great revolutions."[10] In December 1925, he lost his position on the Central Committee. In 1926 he joined the short-lived United Opposition an alliance that joined the Zinoviev faction to Trotsky and the Left Opposition.
In the 1920s, it was a common practice to dispatch members of opposition groups - such as Alexandra Kollontai and Christian Rakovsky - away on diplomatic missions. In May 1926, Safarov was appointed First Secretary of the Plenipotentiary Office in the Republic of China and in 1927 was appointed to the Trade Mission of the Soviet Union in Turkey.[1] On 18 December 1927, he was expelled from the CPSU, and then arrested and sentenced to 4 years of exile in Achinsk.
Almost immediately after the expulsions in December 1927, Zinoviev recanted, submitted to Stalin's leadership and wrote to his supporters to do the same. Safarov was one of the few to refuse at first, but recanted after a year and after filing an application for his withdrawal from the opposition on 9 November 1928, he was restored to the CPSU. In 1929-34, he worked for the Eastern Department of Comintern.[2]
In an unknown date he joined a secret opposition group with a Bolshevik named Tarkhanov, which not much is known about. A letter of Lev Sedov written by the end of 1932 said this group would be one of those willing to join a clandestine political bloc with followers of Leon Trotsky: "The Safar–Tarkhan Group have not yet formally entered they have too extreme a position; they will enter very soon." Trotsky's letters defined the bloc as a force to fight Stalinist repression. Trotskyist historian Pierre Broué said the bloc dissolved in early 1933, because some of its members were arrested.[11]
Arrest and execution
On 25 December 1934, after the assassination of
Almost every other former member of the Zinoviev opposition group was executed during the Great Purge, but Safarov survived by co-operating with the NKVD and denouncing others, but was sentenced to death by a decree of a Special Collegium of the NKVD on 16 July 1942 following the German Invasion of the Soviet Union, ironically on the same day Safarov had signed the death warrant for the Romanovs 24 years prior. He was executed on 27 July 1942 in Saratov and was consigned to an unmarked grave.[citation needed]
Safarov was the only individual convicted in the case of the Leningrad Counter-Revolutionary Zinoviev Group who was not posthumously rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in the years following Stalin's death, as the court concluded that "Safarov G.I., given his provocative activities after his arrest, is not advisable to rehabilitate".[citation needed] The certificate of the case prepared on 16 October 1961 by the responsible controller of the CPC at the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Military Prosecutor of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office noted:
"It is especially necessary to dwell on the testimony of Safarov. At repeated interrogations during the preliminary investigation in the present case, Safarov named 111 people, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and many other former opposition participants, as well as persons whom Safarov independently attributed participation in the opposition. Without citing specific facts that could be used as a basis for accusing the persons named in anti-Soviet activities, Safarov attributed to them the holding of such and each of them a negative political characteristic. Subsequently, in 1938–1940, during his time in prison, Safarov was used as a witness and a provocateur on the instructions of state security personnel, and also, on his own initiative, gave testimony to numerous individuals.[citation needed] Safarov reported in a statement dated 10 September 1941 to Vsevolod Merkulov, that for more than two years he has been "rigorously fulfilling the tasks of the investigative unit for combating enemies of the people".[citation needed] In another statement addressed to Lavrentiy Beria he insisted that he could still be "something of great use to the NKVD" and requested that Beria resume issuing him additional funds and supplies.[citation needed]
Not until 1991 was Safarov formally rehabilitated.[citation needed]
References
- ^ a b c d "Сафаров Георгий Иванович". Энциклопедия фонда "Хаязг" (Armenian Encyclopedia of the Khayazg Foundation). Retrieved 18 October 2022.
- ^ ISBN 0-8179-1211-8.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Krupskaya, Nadezhda (Lenin's widow) (1970). Memories of Lenin. London: Panther. pp. 208–09.
- ^ Krupskaya. Memories of Lenin. p. 261.
- ^ Schapiro, Leonard (1965). The Origin of the Communist Autocracy - Political Opposition in the Soviet State: First Phase, 1917-1922. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. p. 366.
- ^ Medvedev, Roy (1976). Let History Judge, The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. Nottingham: Spokesman. p. 14.
- ^ Lenin, V.I. Letter to A.A.Ioffe, 13 September 1921, Collected Works, Vol 45 (PDF). Moscow: Progress Publishers. p. 297. Retrieved 18 October 2022.
- ^ Lenin. Collected Works Vol 45. p. 418.
- ^ Carr, E.H. (1970). Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926, Volume 2. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. p. 28.
- ^ Carr. Socialism in One Country, Volume 2. p. 134.
- ^ "Pierre Broué: The "Bloc" of the Oppositions against Stalin (January 1980)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 7 August 2020.