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Andrei Bubnov

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Andrei Bubnov
Андрей Бубнов
People's Commissar for Education
In office
September 1929 – October 1937
PremierAleksei Rykov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Preceded byAnatoly Lunacharsky
Succeeded byPyotr Tyurkin
Head of thePolitical Directorate of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army
In office
17 January 1924 – 1 October 1929
PresidentMikhail Frunze
Kliment Voroshilov
Preceded byVladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko
Succeeded byYan Gamarnik
Head ofMilitary-Revolutionary Committeeof theUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
In office
12 July – 18 September 1918
Preceded byVolodymyr Zatonsky
Succeeded byFyodor Sergeyev
Member of the6thPolitburo
In office
10 October – 29 November 1917
Full member of the13thSecretariat
In office
30 April – 31 December 1925
Candidate member of the14th,15thSecretariat
In office
1 January 1926 – 13 July 1930
Full member of the13th,14th,15th,16thOrgburo
In office
2 June 1924 – 10 February 1934
Personal details
Born
Andrei Sergeyevich Bubnov

(1883-04-03)April 3, 1883
Ivanovo-Voznesensk,Russian Empire
Died1 August 1938(1938-08-01)(aged 55)
Kommunarka shooting ground,Moscow Oblast,Soviet Union
NationalityRussian
Political partyRSDLP(Bolsheviks) (1903–1918)
Russian Communist Party(1918–1937)
Alma materMoscow Agricultural Institute
Occupationrevolutionary, politician, Communist ideologist

Andrei Sergeyevich Bubnov(Russian:Андре́й Серге́евич Бу́бнов;3 April [O.S.22 March] 1883 – 1 August 1938)[1][n 1]was a RussianBolshevikrevolutionary leader, one of Bolshevik leaders in Ukraine,Sovietpolitician and military leader and member of theLeft Opposition.

Life[edit]

Early career[edit]

Bubnov was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk in Vladimir Governorate (nowIvanovo,Ivanovo Oblast,Russia).[3]into a localRussianmerchant's family.[4][5]He studied at theMoscow Agricultural Institute,where he was involved in revolutionary circles from 1900. He failed to graduate. In 1903, he joined theBolshevikwing of theRussian Social Democratic Labour Party(RSDLP).[3]In summer 1905, he joined the Ivanono-Voznesensk party committee, and was their delegate to the4th(1906) and5th(1907) Party Conferences in Stockholm and London. In 1907–08, he was a member of the RSDLP's Moscow committee, and of the Bolshevik committee for theCentral Industrial Region.[6]He was arrested in 1908.[3]In his autobiography, he stated that he was arrested 13 times during his revolutionary career, and spent four years in prison or in a fortress.[3]

Bubnov in 1906

On his release from prison in 1909 Bubnov was made an agent of theCentral Committeein Moscow. He was arrested again in 1910, and interned in a fortress.[6]After his release in 1911, he was sent to organize workers inNizhny Novgorod.From there, he was one of the organisers of thePrague Conferenceof January 1912, the first that excluded all RSDLP members who were not Bolsheviks. He was under arrest at the time of the conference, but in his absence was elected a candidate member of the first all-BolshevikCentral Committee.Afterwards he was sent to St Petersburg to assist in the launch ofPravda,and to work with the Bolshevik faction in theFourth Duma.Arrested yet again, he was deported toKharkov.

In the Russian Revolution and Civil War[edit]

On the outbreak of theFirst World WarBubnov became involved in theanti-war movementinKharkiv,whence he had been deported after being expelled from St Petersburg. Arrested in August 1914, he was deported toPoltava.He moved ToSamara,where he was arrested in October 1916, and exiled to Siberia in February 1917, but while he was in transit, he heard news of theFebruary Revolution,and made his way back to Moscow.

In Moscow, Bubnov was elected to theMoscow Sovietand, at the 6th Party Conference in July 1917, he was elected to the Bolshevik central committee, which would later become theCentral Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.In August, he moved toPetrograd,where he was a central figure during theOctober Revolution.On 23 October, two weeks before the revolution, the Central Committee appointed a seven-man 'political consisting ofLenin,Zinoviev,Kamenev,Trotsky,Stalin,Sokolnikovand Bubnov. This is sometimes regarded as the firstPolitburo,[7]but Trotsky's recollection was that this group was "completely impractical", since Lenin and Zinoviev were in hiding, and Zinoviev and Kamenev opposed the planned revolution, and "never once assembled."[8]Bubnov's real importance was as a member of theMilitary Revolutionary Committee."It was this body rather than the party 'politburo' which made the military preparations for the revolution."[9]directed the seizure of power. His role was to supervise the seizure of the postal and telegraph systems. After theNovember revolution,he was appointed Commissar for Railways, before being sent toRostov-on-Donto organise resistance to the newly formedWhite ArmyofGeneral Kaledin.[3]

Members of the Ukrainian Military Revolutionary Committee,Volodymyr Zatonsky,Yuriy Kotsyubynsky,Andrei Bubnov, 1918

Bubnov clashed with Lenin for the first time when he opposed the decision to sign theTreaty of Brest-Litovskthat ended the war with Germany. For the next four years, Bubnov was prominent in the left wing opposition to Lenin. He was dropped from the Central Committee in March 1918, but reinstated as a candidate member a year later.[10]In February 1918, he joined theLeft Communists,and moved to Ukraine, to organise partisan detachments in the 'neutral zone' east of the German front line.[3]He andGeorgy Pyatakov,who led the left in the Ukrainian party, argued that Ukraine was not a signatory to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and that they were therefore entitled to organise partisan war against the Germans.[11]

In October 1918, Bubnov moved toKyiv,which was ruled byHetman Skoropadskiy,with German backing, and later by the Ukrainian nationalistSymon Petliura,Bubnov acted as chairman of the clandestine Kyiv soviet, retaining that position after the Red Army had taken Kyiv.[3]During theRussian Civil War,he was a political commissar with theRed Army,fighting on theUkrainian Front.During the Ninth Party Congress in Moscow, in March 1920, he accused the central party leadership of wrecking the party organisation in Ukraine by removing oppositionists, and threatening the stability of the Ukraine government by alienating peasant farmers.[12]He was again removed from the Central Committee and, soon afterwards, he was recalled to Moscow to take charge of the textile industry. At the next party congress, in March 1921, he acted as a spokesman for the "Democratic Centralists",who demanded less centralised control of the communist party, but on hearing of the outbreak of theKronstadt rebellion,rushed north to take part in suppresing, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.[3]

In 1921–22, Bubnov was posted in theNorth Caucasus.In 1922, he was appointed head of theAgitpropdepartment of the Central Committee,[6]which meant he was working alongside Stalin, the new General Secretary.

In the Soviet Union[edit]

Bubnov's last act as an oppositionist was to sign theDeclaration of 46,in October 1923, a call for greater party democracy organised by future members ofLeft Oppositionwho supported Trotsky in the power struggle that followed Lenin's death. In January 1924, while Lenin was incapacitated by a stroke, the head of the Political Directorate,Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko,a Trotsky supporter was sacked, and Bubnov was appointed in his place, despite his past as a left oppositionist. From then on, he was a reliable supporter of Stalin. In May 1924, he was restored to full membership of the Central Committee, which he retained until his arrest.In 1924–29, he was a member of theOrgburo.[4]

Andrei Bubnov (military uniform) andMaria Ulyanovaat the meeting of the workers and peasants news correspondents 1926

Early in 1926, Bubnov was appointed head of a Soviet delegation to China, to investigate what seemed to be a breakdown in relations with the Chinese military authorities. He travelled under the name Ivanovsky, taking extraordinary precautions to hide his identity.[13]Following theCanton Coupon 20 March 1926, he worked out an agreement with the new Nationalist leaderChiang Kai-shek.He then worked withGrigori VoitinskyandFedor Raskolnikovon the "Preliminary Theses on the Situation in China", which was presented to theECCIin November and December of that year.[2]

In 1929, he replacedLunacharskyasPeople's Commissarfor Education. AsCommissar for Education,he ended the period of progressive, experimental educational practices and switched the emphasis to training in practical industrial skills. It was in this capacity that he attended theFirst All-Russian Museum Congressheld in Moscow in December 1930.[14]

Arrest and death[edit]

In October 1937, during theGreat Purge,Bubnov arrived at the Kremlin for a meeting of the Central Committee, but was barred by the guards from entering. Frightened, he went back to the Commissariat for Education, and heard on the radio that evening that he had been removed from his post of People's Commissar.[15]He was arrested by theNKVDa few days later, on 17 October 1937.[4]He was then still a member of the Central Committee, which convened on 4 December, and received a message from Stalin saying that Bubnov had confessed to being 'an enemy of the people' and a German spy.[16]He was expelled from the Party Central Committee.

Though the charges were false, Bubnov did confess quite quickly – probably under torture – and became so co-operative that the NKVD put him in the same cell asPavel Postyshev,who was refusing to incriminate himself, in the hope that Bubnov would help break his resolve.[17]On 26 July, Bubnov's name was included in a death list of 138 individuals submitted to Stalin, who ordered them all to be shot. After a 20 minute trial on 1 August 1938, he was sentenced to death, and shot the same day.[17][4][1] Themodus operandiof theSoviet regimewas often to keep secret the fate of particular purged persons: whether they were sent tointernal exile to a labor camp,sent to a psychiatric hospital (in which the regime disguised confinement and drugging as compassionate "health care" ), or executed. This policy encouraged their families and the general public to believe that they were probably still alive in a camp or hospital somewhere. Bubnov was posthumouslyrehabilitatedin March 1956 during thede-Stalinizationof theKhrushchev thaw.[2]The Soviet government did not make public the lists of the purged persons who had already long been executed. Thus, their relatives were often still searching for them in various psychiatric hospitals in the 1970s, as was the case with Bubnov.

Notes[edit]

  1. ^Formerly, officially said to have died on 12 January 1940[2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ab"Жертвы политического террора в СССР".Lists.memo.ru.Retrieved2013-06-13.
  2. ^abc"Andrei Bubnov",Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern.
  3. ^abcdefghGeorges Haupt, and Jean-Jaques Marie (1974).Makers of the Russian Revolution.(This volume contains a translation of a biographical essay by Bubnov, written for a Soviet encyclopaedia around 1926) London: George Allen & Unwin. p. 111.ISBN0-04-947021-3.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: location (link)
  4. ^abcd"Бубнов Андрей Сергеевич 1883–1938".Khronos.Retrieved5 May2023.
  5. ^"Guide to the history of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union".Knowbysight.info.Retrieved2013-06-13.
  6. ^abcShmidt, O.Yu. (chief editor), Bukharin N.I.; et al. (1927).Большая Советская Энциклопедия, volume 7.Moscow. p. 763.{{cite book}}:|first1=has generic name (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. ^Dmitri Volkogonov,Lenin. A New Biography,translated and edited by Harold Shukman (New York: The Free Press, 1994), p. 185
  8. ^Trotsky, Leon (1967).Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, volume three.London: Sphere. p. 148.
  9. ^Carr, E.H. (1969).The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923 volume 1.Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. p. 105.
  10. ^Schapiro, Leonard (1965).The Origin of the Communist Autocracy, Political Opposition in the Soviet State: First Phase, 1917–1922.New York: Frederick A. Praeger. pp. 106–07, 365.
  11. ^Daniels, Robert Vincent (1969).The Conscience of the Revolution, Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia.New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 98.ISBN0-671-20387-8.
  12. ^Daniels.The Conscience of the Revolution.p. 102.
  13. ^Carr, E.H. (1972).Socialism in One Country, 1924–26, volume 3.Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. p. 785.
  14. ^Zhilyaev, Arseny (2015). "Notes on the Original Publications".Avant-Garde Museology:615–628.ISBN9780816699193.JSTOR10.5749/j.ctt18s310n.50.
  15. ^Medvedev, Roy (1976).Let History Judge, The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism.Nottingham: Spokesman. p. 357.
  16. ^J.Arch Getty, and Oleg V. Naumov (1999).The Road to Terror, Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939.New Haven: Yale U.P. pp. 465–7.ISBN0-300-07772-6.
  17. ^ab"Доклад Комиссии ЦК КПСС Президиуму ЦК КПСС по установлению причин массовых репрессий против членов и кандидатов в члены ЦК ВКП(б), избранных на ХVII съезде партии. 9 февраля 1956 г."Исторические Материалы.Retrieved5 May2023.
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