Nikolai Bryukhanov
Nikolai Bryukhanov | |
---|---|
Николай Брюханов | |
People's Commissar for Food of the USSR | |
In office 6 July 1923 – 9 May 1924 | |
Premier | Vladimir Lenin |
Preceded by | None—post created |
Succeeded by | None—post abolished |
People's Commissar for Food of the RSFSR | |
In office December 1921 – 1923 | |
Premier | Vladimir Lenin |
Preceded by | Alexander Tsiurupa |
Succeeded by | Moses I. Kalmanovich |
Personal details | |
Born | Nikolai Pavlovich Bryukhanov 16 December 1878 (1918–1938) |
Nikolai Pavlovich Bryukhanov[a] (party aliases Andrey and Andrey Simbirsky; literary alias N. Pavlov; December 28, 1878 – September 1, 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik, Soviet statesman and political figure who served as People's Commissar of Finance between 1926 and 1930. Until recently, his date of death was believed to have been June 30, 1943.
Biography
Born at
During the
Bryukhanov was put in charge of the People's Commissariat of Supplies in December 1921. With the creation of the
During 1930, the government ordered the printing of millions of paper rubles, to finance the rapid industrialisation of the soviet economy. This created a situation in which peasant farmers and others with goods to sell insisted on being paid with coins rather than paper money. To meet a shortage, Bryukhanov recommended importing silver, as a short term measure, and switching to nickel.[6] He was supported by the head of the State Bank, Georgy Pyatakov, but angered Stalin, who drew an obscene cartoon during a meeting of the Politburo on 5 April 1930, with the caption: "For all his sins, past and present, hang Bryukhanov by the balls. If the balls hold out, consider him acquitted by trial. If they do not hold, drown him in the river."[7]
In July 1930, Leonid Yurovsky, a leading economist employed by the Commissariat of Finance was arrested and accused of being a member of a non-existent "Peasants Labour Party", led by Nikolai Kondratiev, and was later shot.[8] In letter to Vyacheslav Molotov, written at about the same time as Yurovsky's arrest, Stalin claimed that it was Yurovsky, and not Bryukhanov, who ran the commissariat, and instructed:
It is thus important to a) fundamentally purge the Finance and Gosbank bureaucracy, despite the wails of dubious Communists like Bryukhanov-Pyatakov; b) definitely shoot two or three dozen wreckers from these apparaty, including several dozen common cashiers.[9]
Bryukhanov and Pyatakov were sacked on October 15, 1930. Bryukhanov was replaced with
Bryukhanov was arrested by the
Notes
References
- ^ "Жертвы политического террора в СССР".
- ^ a b Shmidt, O.Yu. (chief editor) Bukharin N.I. et al (eds) (1927). Большая советская энциклопедия Volume 7. Moscow.
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has generic name (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ISBN 0-521-52703-1p.339.
- ^ See Samuel A. Oppenheim. "Between right and left: Grigorii Yakovlevich Sokolnikov and the development of the Soviet state, 1921-1929", in Slavic Review, Winter 1989. Available online as of March 2006.
- ^ See USSR Facts and Figures Archived 2006-05-07 at the Wayback Machine
- )
- ISBN 978-0-9777433-3-9.
- ^ "17 сентября Леонида Юровского". Белая Россия. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
- ^ See Stalin's letter dated "No later than August 6" in Stalin's Letters to Molotov.
- ISBN 0-521-38741-8p.267.
- ISBN 0-19-280319-0p.79: "In such [non-survivor] cases the document often contained a fraudulent statement as to the date and circumstances of the victim's death".
- Yu. P. Kizin. Nikolai Pavlovich Bryukhanov, Ufa, Bashkirskoe Knizhnoe Izdatel'stvo, 1968, 84pp.
- K.A. Zalessky. Imperiya Stalina: Biograficheskij entsiklopedicheskij slovar, Moscow, Veche, 2000 Excerpts available on-line