Saul Bron
Saul Bron | |
|---|---|
| Born | 25 January 1887 Odessa (Ukraine, Russian Empire) |
| Died | 21 April 1938 Kommunarka shooting ground, USSR (burial place) |
| Cause of death | Executed during Stalin's Great Purge |
| Nationality | Ukrainian Jewish |
| Citizenship | USSR |
| Spouse | Klara Azarievna Bron (Kholodovskaya) (1885-1945) |
| Children | Lev Saulovich Bron Miriam Saulovna Bron |
Saul Grigorievich Bron (Saul G. Bron, S. G. Bron;
Early years
Saul Grigorievich (Shoil Gershkovich) Bron was born 25 January 1887 in Odessa (Ukraine, Russian Empire), in a Jewish family. He graduated the Odessa gymnasium and began his higher education at the Kiev Institute of Commerce (now Kyiv National Economic University). From 1905 to 1907 he continued his education in Europe, where he studied the grain trade and earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Zurich. After his return to Ukraine, he participated in development of Jewish agricultural colonies in Kherson Gubernia and taught at Novopoltavka Jewish agricultural school.
Political affiliation
As a student at Kiev Commercial Institute Bron was involved in the social-democratic movement, popular among secular Jews in the Ukraine as a reaction to anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire. In 1913 became a member of the Jewish Social Democratic Labor Party of Ukraine; in 1918–1919 – socialist-federalist. In 1919 became a member of VKP(b), after the latter merged with the Jewish Communist Party (a split-off of the Jewish Social Democratic Labor Party).
Professional career
In 1921 Bron became a member of the
After formation of the
In 1926 Bron began his work for the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade of the USSR (under A. I. Mikoyan), and in March 1927 was appointed chairman of Amtorg Trading Corporation in New York.[1] Prior to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the USSR in 1933, Amtorg, technically a private corporation, served as a de facto trade delegation and a quasi-embassy of the USSR.
Bron was the third chairman of Amtorg. He replaced A. V. Prigarin (1925–1926) and was replaced by P. A. Bogdanov (1930–1934). Bron was the first president of Amtorg whose command of English enabled him to negotiate without the aid of interpreters (he was also fluent in German and French).[2] His tenure (1927–1930) concurred with the introduction of the first five-year plan, and his role was to contract with major American companies to help build Soviet industrial infrastructure.
On 9 October 1928 and 24 May 1929 Bron signed two contracts with
On 8 May 1929 Bron signed an historic contract with the firm of the leading American industrial architect from Detroit,
Among other American firms, commissioned by Bron to provide technical aid to the USSR, were Hugh L. Cooper (construction of the Dneproges Dam), Arthur G. McKee (design and construction of Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Plant), Freyn Engineering (Novokuznetsk Metallurgical Plant), DuPont de Nemours, Radio Corporation of America, and more than a hundred other companies.[6]
In 1930 Bron was transferred to London, where he was appointed chairman of ARCOS and head of the USSR Trade Delegation in Great Britain. During 1930–1931 he negotiated and signed several large contracts with British firms, including Imperial Chemical Industries, Armstrong-Vickers, Associated British Machine Tool Makers, and Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company.
On 20 September 1931, on Stalin's initiative, the Politburo recalled Bron back to the USSR. He remained a member of the Collegium of the Commissariat of Foreign Trade and in 1933 was appointed Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce of the USSR. However, in 1935, he was demoted and given a job as a deputy to the head of the State publishing agency OGIZ, Mikhail P. Tomsky.
Arrest and death
Bron was arrested on 25 October 1937. He was falsely accused of being a member of an anti-Soviet terrorist organization; of preparing, together with Tomsky, a terrorist act against Stalin; and of being an agent of British intelligence. After five months in
Bron was buried in a mass grave at Kommunarka shooting ground near Moscow, one of the sites of mass executions during Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s–1950s. He was posthumously rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 25 April 1956.
Family
From 1931 to 1937, Bron and his family resided in Moscow, at 2/20 Serafimovich Street, apt. No. 403, a newly built massive building across the river from the Kremlin, known as Dom pravitel'stva ("Government House"), the residence of the upper echelons of the Soviet hierarchy, described by Yuri Trifonov in his novel, House on the Embankment. After Bron's arrest, his wife, Klara Bron, was arrested too, and the children, son Lev and daughter Miriam, were evicted from the apartment and banished from Moscow.
Klara (Chaya) Azarievna Bron (Kholodovskaia) was born in 1885 in
Notable works
Bron, Saul G. (1930). Soviet Economic Development and American Business: Results of the first year under five-year plan and further perspectives. H. Liveright.
References
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Sevost'ianov, G.N. (2004). Moscow-Washington, The Road to Recognition. 1918-1933 (in Russian). Moscow: Nauka. p. 89. OCLC 57451551.
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Feinstein, J.M. Tatcher (1974). Fifty Years of U.S.-Soviet Trade. New York: Symposium Press, Inc. p. 55. OCLC 1322146.
- ^
Louis, Fischer (1930). The Soviets in World Affairs: A History of the Relations Between the Soviet Union and the Rest of the World, 1917–1929. London: J. Cape. pp. 766–767. OCLC 1312339.
- ^
Shpotov, B.M. (2003). Henry Ford: Life and Business (in Russian). Moscow: KDU. pp. 350, 360, note 39. OCLC 55738822.
- ^
Austin, Richard Cartwright (2004). Building Utopia: Erecting Russia's First Modern City, 1930. Kent State University Press. OCLC 819325601.
- ^ "A Ruble in the Hand". Time. 17 June 1929.
- ^
Grineev, V. M.; Danieel, Yu.; Memorial Society; et al. (2003). Uznitsy "ALZhIRa": spisok zhenshchin-zakliuchennykh Akmolinskogo i drugich otdelenii Karlaga (in Russian). Moskva: Zvenia. OCLC 55037781.
Main Sources
Melnikova-Raich, Sonia. "The Soviet Problem with Two 'Unknowns': How an American Architect and a Soviet Negotiator Jump-Started the Industrialization of Russia. Part I: Albert Kahn". )
Rasstrel'nye spiski: Moskva, 1937–1941: "Kommunarka", Butovo: kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii L. S. Eremina, A. B. Roginskii, eds. (2000). M: Memorial – Zven'ia (in Russian).
Khaustov V. N. (2011). Lubyanka: The Soviet elite on Stalin's Golgotha: 1937-1938: Stalin's archive: Documents and comments (in Russian). M.: Mezhdunarodnyi fond "Demokratiia".
Saul, Norman E. (2008). Historical Dictionary of United States-Russian/Soviet Relations. Scarecrow Press. p. 24.
External links
"The Martyrolog of victims of political repression shot and buried in Moscow and Moscow oblast' during the period of 1918–1953", electronic data base, The Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center «Peace, Progress, Human Rights», Moscow. http://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/martirolog/?t=page&id=3828 (in Russian)
Victims of Political Repressions. Museum "The House on the Embankment", Moscow. http://museumdom.narod.ru/repres.html (in Russian)