Vyacheslav Menzhinsky

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In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Rudolfovich and the family name is Menzhinsky.
Vyacheslav Menzhinsky
Вячеслав Менжинский
People's Commissar for Finance of the RSFSR
In office
30 October 1917 – 21 March 1918
PremierVladimir Lenin
Preceded byIvan Skvortsov-Stepanov
Succeeded byIsidore Gukovsky
Personal details
Born
Wiesław Mężyński

(1874-08-19)19 August 1874
RSDLP (1902–1903)
RSDLP (Bolsheviks) (1903–1918)
Russian Communist Party (1918–1934)
Alma materSaint Petersburg State University

Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky (

Omar Khayyám
).

Early life

Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, a member of the

Saint Petersburg University in 1898, and practised law in Yaroslavl
, while dabbling in literature. He had a novel published in 1905. In February 1905, his young daughter died of a cerebral haemorrhage. The trauma ended his ten-year marriage, and he left Yaroslavl to join his unmarried sisters, Vera and Ludmila, who shared an apartment that was a popular meeting place for revolutionaries.

Political activism

Menzhinsky had joined the

proletarian culture developed by Alexander Bogdanov and Anatoly Lunacharsky.[4]
Writing in the Russian emigre journal, Our Echo in July 1910, Menzhinsky wrote:

Lenin is a political Jesuit who over the course of many years has moulded Marxism to the aims of the moment ... Lenin, this illegitimate child of Russian absolutism, considers himself not only the natural successor to the Russian throne, when it becomes vacant, but also the sole heir of the Socialist International. Should he ever come to power, the mischief he would do would not be much less than that of Paul I. The Leninist are not even a faction, but a clan of party gypsies who hope to drown the voice of the proletariat with their screams.[5]

Personality

Trotsky who knew Menzhinsky from when they were exiles, in 1920, left a scathing portrait of him: "The impression he made on me could best be described by saying that he made none at all. He seemed like a poor sketch for an unfinished portrait. Only now and then would an ingratiating smile or secret play of the eyes betray his eagerness from insignificance ... No-one took any notice of Menzhinsky, so quietly toiling away over his papers."[6]

Later life

After the

Bolshevik Revolution, he was appointed People's Commissar for Finance. His first act in this post was to drag a large sofa into his office, tacked a notice on it saying 'Commissariat of Finance', and lay down on it. Lenin came in and found him asleep.[7] When officials at the Russian State Bank refused to recognise the new regime, Menzhinsky had the director and others arrested. According to G. von Schantz, Menzhinsky "personally conducted the wrecking of the Russian banks, a maneuver that deprived all opponents of Bolshevism
of their financial means of warfare."

In April 1918, Menzhinsky was appointed Soviet consul general in Berlin, but in November, he was expelled, along with the Ambassador

Trust and Sindikat-2 counterintelligence operations, in the course of which leaders of large anti-Soviet centers abroad, Boris Savinkov and Sidney Reilly
, were lured to the Soviet Union and arrested.

Meanwhile, the

personality cult had already begun to form, coinciding with several important purges in 1930 to 1931.[citation needed
]

Death

Menzhinsky spent his last years as an invalid, suffering from acute

Lubyanka, but rarely interfered in the day-to-day operation of the GPU. Stalin tended to deal with his first deputy Genrikh Yagoda, who essentially took over as head of the organization in all but name beginning in the late 1920s.[8]

Menzhinsky died on May 10, 1934, at the age of 59. When his successor, Yagoda, made his public confession under duress at the Moscow

Trial of the Twenty One in 1938, Yagoda stated that he had poisoned Menzhinsky. In 1988, the Soviet authorities admitted that the entire trial was based on false confessions forced out of the defendants, but Yagoda was not rehabilitated
.

Menzhinsky was cremated and his ashes was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Gallery

  • Menzhinsky, 1917
    Menzhinsky with his sisters
  • Members of the presidium of CheKa (left to right) Yakov Peters, Józef Unszlicht, Abram Belenky (standing), Felix Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky, 1921
    Menzhinsky, 1899
  • Menzhinsky, 1926
    Menzhinsky sometime in the 1880s
  • Menzhinsky, 1928
    Menzhinsky, 1905
  • Menzhinsky, cover of Time magazine, 1931
    Menzhinsky, 1917
  • Menzhinsky, 1932
    Members of the presidium of CheKa (left to right)
    Yakov Peters, Józef Unszlicht, Abram Belenky (standing), Felix Dzerzhinsky
    , Menzhinsky, 1921
  • Menzhinsky sometime in the 1880s
    Menzhinsky, 1926
  • Menzhinsky in 1905
    Menzhinsky with his son Rudolf
  • Menzhinsky, 1928
    Menzhinsky, 1928
  • Menzhinsky in 1899
    Menzhinsky, cover of Time magazine, 1931
  • Menzhinsky with his sisters
    Menzhinsky, 1932
  • Menzhinsky, 1933 (last known photo)
    Menzhinsky, 1933 (last known photo)

See also

References

  1. ISBN 0-75381-766-7
    .
  2. ^ Rayfield, Donald (2005). Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. Retrieved 12 October 2021.
  3. ^ Krupskaya, Nadezhda (1970). Memories of Lenin. London: Panther. p. 138.
  4. ^ Biggart, John (1989), Alexander Bogdanov, Left-Bolshevism and the Proletkult 1904–1932, University of East Anglia, p. 150
  5. ^ Shub, David (1966). Lenin. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. pp. 180–81.
  6. ^ Trotsky, Leon (1975). My Life. Hardmondsworth,Middlesex: Penguin. pp. 465–66.
  7. ^ Shub. Lenin. pp. 305–06.
  8. ^ "Vyacheslav Menzhinsky" article on the Spartacus Educational website Archived 2013-07-03 at the Wayback Machine

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vyacheslav Menzhinsky.
Political offices
Preceded by People's Commissar for Finance of the RSFSR
30 October 1917 – 21 March 1918 		Succeeded by
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