Biography of Pyatakov

The main figures among the accused were Pyatakov, Serebryakov, Radek and Sokolnikov. Yuri Pyatakov was one of the most gifted and most respected people in the Bolshevik party. When the October Revolution occurred, he was only twenty -seven years old. Nevertheless, there were already twelve years of revolutionary activity behind his shoulders. In the year, his elder brother Leonid, who led the Bolshevik underground in Kyiv, was captured by Gaidamaki and tortured.

It was after this that Yuri Pyatakov asked Lenin to release him from the duties of the chief commissioner of the State Bank at that time he held and send him to Ukraine to participate in the underground struggle with the Central Rada. After the revolution won in Ukraine, Pyatakov became the first chairman of the Ukrainian Council of People's Commissars. During the Civil War, he became one of the outstanding organizers of the Red Army.

He commanded the, and then the 6th armies, and later he was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Army, which fought on the Polish front. But Pyatakov’s truly ability appeared in the field of national economic construction. At the end of the Civil War, when the most acute problem for the country was a lack of fuel, Lenin gave him the task of achieving a sharp increase in coal mining in the Donbass.

Pyatakov brilliantly completed this task. About how high Lenin appreciated Pyatakov, at least by the fact that he is mentioned in his famous "will", where there are only six names of the largest party leaders. In this document, where Lenin warned the party against the Stalinist dominance, he described Pyatakov and Bukharin like this: “This, in my opinion, is the most outstanding forces from the youngest forces,” and added to Pyatakov: “Pyatakov is an undoubtedly outstanding will and outstanding abilities, but he became too fond of administrator over the years, he became a statesman of the highest rank.

The country was primarily owed to the successful implementation of the first and second five -year -olds. Stalin kept him in the “fucker” only because in the second half of the xs, he took an active part in the Trotskyist opposition. Due to this, the People's Commissar of heavy industry was purely formally Sergo Ordzhonikidze - a person who did not receive education and poorly versed in difficult financial and economic issues.

Among the "commanders of the socialist industry" and party leaders, however, it was known that Pyatakov is the actual leader of heavy industry and the soul of industrialization. Ordzhonikidze was smart enough to also recognize this. If this project seems good for you, I will also subscribe to this under this and with both hands and together with you I will fight for it at a meeting of the Politburo!

Stalin needed Pyatakov for the implementation of the industrialization program, which was the foundation of the so -called "General line of the party." And if Stalin needed something to Zareza, he did not show his true attitude to such a person, but, on the contrary, tried to please him in every way - even if he knew that, having squeezed everything out of him, he would finish his throat.

Stalin knew that Pyatakov, distinguished by special asceticism, occupies two modest rooms with his family in an old, launched house in Gnezdnikovsky Lane and that he generally lives on his salary without using any privileges. And then one day the case happened in the year when Pyatakov and his wife were in the service, on behalf of Stalin, employees of the Office of the Council of People's Commissars appeared in his apartment and transferred his son and all his modest property to the apartment in the new house - spacious and luxuriously furnished.

Stalin tried in every possible way to bring Pyatakov closer to himself, but he remained indifferent to the Stalinist flirting. Pyatakov broke with the opposition, but to vilify his like -minded people and praise Stalin stubbornly refused. In conversations with the former oppositionists, Pyatakov rejected their reproaches that he went over to the Stalinist camp, he said that he simply moved away from politics.

Stalin knew all this. From the report of the NKVD, he also knew that in a conversation with a group of friends of Pyatakov once spoke like this: “I cannot deny that Stalin is mediocrity and that he is not the person who should stand at the head of the party; but the situation is such that if we continue to persist in opposition, Stalin, we will eventually have to be in the worst position: we will come when we are forced To obey some Kaganovich.

And I personally never agree to obey Kaganovich! But he was patient and knew how to wait. He had to stock up on for a rather long time, necessary for the industrialization of the country and the training of personnel of technical specialists who would be able to continue the industrial race. Stalin had been waiting for eight years. By the end of the year, he ordered the berry to arrest Pyatakov.I was well acquainted with Pyatakov.

The beginning of our acquaintance dates back to the year when he headed the Glav Epo -Council, and I was the deputy head of the OGPU economic department and maintained constant contact with Pyatakov’s department. At the same time, I was a prosecutor - a member of the secret "legal commission", also headed by Pyatakov. This commission was formed by decision of the Politburo in the same year and was investigating the charges against the leaders of industrial hicks.

The commission was supposed to determine whether to send a case to the court or in the interests of the proceedings can be limited to disciplinary measures. The most characteristic feature of Pyatakov was that he had no personal life, he did not belong to himself. Arriving at the service by Tom morning, he left his office at three in the morning. His working day was so filled that he had lunch no more than two or three times a week.

Due to such intensive work and insufficient nutrition, heel was thin and painfully pale. A lanky, tall, with a rare reddish beard, he was a kind of Russian version of Don Quixote. I remember him in an invariably cheap poorly sewn suit. He used to buy inexpensive costumes that for some reason was always small with too short sleeves and wear them for many years. When Pyatakov arrived in Germany, where he was to place Soviet orders for fifty million marks, he occupied the cheapest number, which was found in the hotel.

The director of German companies who were doing business with Pyatakov could not understand why such an influential member of the Soviet government, who also disposed of such large money, dressed worse than the last employee of their own enterprises. Pyatakov was married, but his family life failed. His wife, like himself, was a member of the party; But it was a sloppy woman who had a weakness for drinking.

She almost did not care about the family, and it often happened that Pyatakov, who urgently had to go to a distant area or abroad, was sent to his secretary Kolya Moskalev to lend a couple of pure shirts from him. To the chagrin of the Moscow wife, he often forgot to return them. In recent years, Pyatakov and his wife almost parted, although they remained good friends.

They were connected by love for the only son, who, by the time of the trial of Pyatakov, was only ten years old. The closest friend and assistant Pyatakov Nikolay Moskalev was a man of exceptional charm. In the year he turned thirty -five years old, but by that time they had been working together for fifteen years. Moskalev adored his boss and was attached to him so much that his wife was jealous of Pyatakov and spoke of the latter with undisguised irritation.

In Pyatakov’s case, the NKVD employees, acting with the usual unscrupulous cruelty for them, used his wife and his closest friend against him. This method was quite consistent with the Stalinist "style". Having become the actual head of the NKVD after the death of Dzerzhinsky, Stalin repeatedly inspired the Encvedists that the accused was most acting, given their relatives and close friends.

The reader remembers the case of Smirnov - his wife Safonov and his closest friend - Grochkovsky opposed him. The testimony of his wife against her husband, son against his father, brother against his brother was especially appreciated - not only because it was demoralized by the arrested and knocked out the soil from under his feet. Stalin experienced special pleasure from destroying the family of a political opponent and the collapse of his friendly connections.

Of course, he was an unsurpassed master of any kind of personal revenge. She knew about the "disappearance" of the children of the accused in the case of the Trotsky-Zinovievsky Terrorist Center "and was crushed by fear for the fate of her son. So, in order to save his life, she agreed to give any testimony against her husband. Kolya Moskalev, secretary Pyatakov, had a little daughter.

If he continued to remain the semi -literate and naive peasant, as he once crossed the threshold of Pyatakov’s office, he would most likely refuse to slander his boss and friend. But now he had a solid political experience behind him. Communicating with the secretaries of other members of the government, he learned a lot about the morals reigning in the Politburo, and the nature of those in whose hands are now, the fate of the people.

On the other hand, all these testimonies are an empty formality, because Stalin handed Pyatakov long before the arrest and court. With all this, Moskalev observed caution. He told Molchanov that he would sign the testimony against Pyatakov only in the presence of Agranov, whom the agrans personally knew at that time was the deputy Yezhov. When Agranov appeared, Moskalev warned him that he decided to testify against Pyatakov, obeying party discipline, but these testimonies themselves represent a lie.Pyatakov was an exclusively fundamental person and also had a penetrating mind and strong will, was fearless.

I am almost sure that if, among the "second wave" of the arrested Bolsheviks, a person who could withstand his jailers appeared, then this person would be Pyatakov. Therefore, I was very surprised that he gave up relatively easily. As it turned out, the situation was like that. For a rather long time, Pyatakov generally refused to talk with investigators. Yezhova, who had replaced the berry by that time, was not in place.

His deputy agrane, hesitating, called the internal prison and ordered Pyatakov to deliver to him. Ordzhonikidze moved towards Pyatakov, clearly wanting to hug him. Pyatakov dodged and took his hands. I came to you as a friend! I told him about you after this entry of Ordzhonikidze asked Agranov to leave him together with Pyatakov. Their conversation continued on the face.

Did Ordzhonikidze lead an insidious game with Pyatakov under Stalin's pressure, or was it sincere? The subsequent course of events was to answer this question. It was not difficult for me to imagine how the expansive Ordzhonikidze, more and more excited and gesticulating, tells Pyatakov what “fight” he withstood because of him, how he begged Stalin not to involve Pyatakov into the preparing process this time, before leaving, Ordzhonikidze, in the presence of Pyatakov, informed the Stalin's order in the presence Pyatakova and his personal secretary Moskalev.

They should not be called to court even as witnesses. It became clearer than clear that Pyatakov himself Ordzhonikidze advised to give in to Stalin's demand and take part in the crafts of trial - of course, as a defendant. But for me it remained undoubtedly that Ordzhonikidze personally guaranteed Pyatakov: the death sentence would not be sentenced to him. Did Pyatakov Ordzhonikidze believed?

I am convinced that I believed.