David Riazanov (original) (raw)
David Riazanov was born in Odessa, Ukraine, on 10th March 1870. A rebellious teenager he was expelled from secondary school in 1886. According to Boris Souvarine: "Riazanov began his political life at the age of seventeen by organising a socialist circle in Odessa. One of the very first, it was connected with Plekhanov's League for the Emancipation of Labour, the seedbed of Russian Social Democracy, and undertook to publish the principal works of Marxism in the Russian language."
After serving nearly six years he was placed under police supervision in the city of Kishinev, Bessarabia. In 1900, Riazanov moved to Berlin where he established a small Marxist group called Borbo. He refused to join the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) and in 1903 he developed the concept of permanent revolution. This included the idea that it was possible to miss out the stage of advanced capitalism in Russia before progressing to socialism. This brought him into ideological conflict with Lenin, Julius Martov and George Plekhanov and other leaders of the SDLP. However, later, Lenin was to adopt this theory as his own.
Riazanov, like many Russian revolutionaries, returned from exile following the 1905 Russian Revolution. He was active in the trade union movement in St. Petersburg. After the failure of the uprising Riazanov was arrested and imprisoned. He escaped in 1907 and moved to London. Riazanov carried out detailed research into the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and his contributions to left-wing newspapers resulted him in being considered one of the world's leading experts on Marxism. During this period he became a close associate of Leon Trotsky and Anatoli Lunacharsky and together they formed the Mezhrayontsky group.
When Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on 13th March, a Provisional Government, headed by Prince George Lvov, was formed. Lvov allowed all political prisoners to return to their homes. Riazanov returned to St. Petersburg where he helped establish the Russian Railway Union. He was also co-editor of Nashe Slovo, and a member of the Mezhrayontsky group. Other members included Anatoli Lunacharsky, Moisei Uritsky, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko and Alexandra Kollontai.
On 3rd April, 1917, Lenin announced what became known as the April Theses. Lenin attacked Bolsheviks for supporting the Provisional Government. Instead, he argued, revolutionaries should be telling the people of Russia that they should take over the control of the country. In his speech, Lenin urged the peasants to take the land from the rich landlords and the industrial workers to seize the factories. Leon Trotsky gave Lenin his full support: "I told Lenin that nothing separated me from his April Theses and from the whole course that the party had taken since his arrival." The two agreed, however, that Trotsky would not join the Bolshevik Party at once, but would wait until he could bring as many of the Mezhrayontsky group into the Bolshevik ranks. Trotsky officially joined the Bolsheviks in July.
In September 1917, Lenin sent a message to the Bolshevik Central Committee via Ivar Smilga. "Without losing a single moment, organize the staff of the insurrectionary detachments; designate the forces; move the loyal regiments to the most important points; surround the Alexandrinsky Theater (i.e., the Democratic Conference); occupy the Peter-Paul fortress; arrest the general staff and the government; move against the military cadets, the Savage Division, etc., such detachments as will die rather than allow the enemy to move to the center of the city; we must mobilize the armed workers, call them to a last desperate battle, occupy at once the telegraph and telephone stations, place our staff of the uprising at the central telephone station, connect it by wire with all the factories, the regiments, the points of armed fighting, etc."
Joseph Stalin read the message to the Central Committee. Nickolai Bukharin later recalled: "We gathered and - I remember as though it were just now - began the session. Our tactics at the time were comparatively clear: the development of mass agitation and propaganda, the course toward armed insurrection, which could be expected from one day to the next. The letter read as follows: 'You will be traitors and good-for-nothings if you don't send the whole (Democratic Conference Bolshevik) group to the factories and mills, surround the Democratic Conference and arrest all those disgusting people!' The letter was written very forcefully and threatened us with every punishment. We all gasped. No one had yet put the question so sharply. No one knew what to do. Everyone was at a loss for a while. Then we deliberated and came to a decision. Perhaps this was the only time in the history of our party when the Central Committee unanimously decided to burn a letter of Comrade Lenin's. This instance was not publicized at the time."
Lev Kamenev, Gregory Zinoviev, Alexei Rykov and Victor Nogin led the resistance to the idea. They argued that an early action was likely to result in the Bolsheviks being destroyed as a political force. As Robert V. Daniels, the author of Red October: The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 (1967) has explained why Zinoviev felt strongly about the need to wait: "The experience of the summer (the July Days) had brought him to the conclusion that any attempt at an uprising would end as disastrously as the Paris Commune of 1871; revolution was was inevitable, he wrote at the time of the Kornilov crisis, but the party's task for the time being was to restrain the masses from rising to the provocations of the bourgeoisie."
On 7th October, 1917, Lenin sent out another message to the Bolshevik Central Committee: "In our Central Committee and at the top of our party there is a tendency in favor of awaiting the Congress of Soviets, against an immediate uprising. We must overcome this tendency or opinion. Otherwise the Bolsheviks would cover themselves with shame forever; they would be reduced to nothing as a party. For to miss such a moment and to await the Congress of Soviets is either idiocy or complete betrayal.... To wait for the Congress of Soviets, etc., under such conditions means betraying internationalism, betraying the cause of the international socialist revolution."
Lenin thought the details of an uprising would be simple. "We can launch a sudden attack from three points, from Petrograd, from Moscow, from the Baltic Fleet... We have thousands of armed workers and soldiers in Petrograd who can seize at once the Winter Palace, the General Staff building, the telephone exchange and all the largest printing establishments... The troops will not advance against the government of peace... Kerensky will be compelled to surrender." When it was clear that the Bolshevik Central Committee did not accept Lenin's point of view he issued a political ultimatum: "I am compelled to tender my resignation from the Central Committee, which I hereby do, leaving myself the freedom of propaganda in the lower ranks of the party and at the party congress."
Mikhail Lashevich, a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee, argued strongly against taking action at this time: "The strategic plan proposed by Comrade Lenin is limping on all four legs.... Let's not fool ourselves, comrades. Comrade Lenin has not given us any explanation why we need to do this right now, before the Congress of Soviets. I don't understand it. By the time of the Congress of Soviets the sharpness of the situation will be all the clearer. The Congress of Soviets will provide us with an apparatus; if all the delegates who have come together from all over Russia express themselves for the seizure of power, then it is a different matter. But right now it will only be an armed uprising, which the government will try to suppress."
Riazanov gave cautious support for Lenin. On 14th October he argued at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Soviets: "The move is not being prepared by the Bolsheviks; the move is being prepared by that policy which in the course of seven months of the revolution had done so much for the bourgeoisie and nothing for the masses.... We don't know the day and hour for the move, but we say to the mass of the people: prepare for the decisive struggle for land and peace, for bread and freedom. If as a result of this policy a government of the worker and peasant masses arises, we will be in the first ranks of the insurgents."
On the evening of 24th October, 1917, orders were given for the Bolsheviks began to occupy the railway stations, the telephone exchange and the State Bank. The following day the Red Guards surrounded the Winter Palace. Inside was most of the country's Cabinet, although Alexander Kerensky had managed to escape from the city.
The Winter Palace was defended by Cossacks, some junior army officers and the Woman's Battalion. At 9 p.m. the Aurora and the Peter and Paul Fortress began to open fire on the palace. Little damage was done but the action persuaded most of those defending the building to surrender. The Red Guards, led by Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, now entered the Winter Palace and arrested the Cabinet ministers.
On 26th October, 1917, the All-Russian Congress of Soviets met and handed over power to the Soviet Council of People's Commissars. Lenin was elected chairman and other appointments included Leon Trotsky (Foreign Affairs) Alexei Rykov (Internal Affairs), Anatoli Lunacharsky (Education), Alexandra Kollontai (Social Welfare), Felix Dzerzhinsky (Internal Affairs), Joseph Stalin (Nationalities), Peter Stuchka (Justice) and Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko (War).
The balloting for the Constituent Assembly began on 25th November and continued until 9th December. Despite the prevailing disorders and confusion, thirty-six million cast their secret ballots in parts of the country normal enough to hold elections. In most of the large centers of population, the voting was conducted under Bolshevik auspices. Yet twenty-seven of the thirty-six million votes went to other parties. A total of 703 candidates were elected to the assembly in November, 1917. This included Socialist Revolutionaries (299), Bolsheviks (168), Mensheviks (18) and Constitutional Democratic Party (17). As David Shub pointed out, "The Russian people, in the freest election in modern history, voted for moderate socialism and against the bourgeoisie."
First row, left to right: Ivan Smirnov, V. Schmidt, S. Zorin. Middle row, left to right: G. Evdokimov, Joseph Stalin, Lenin, Mikhail Kalinin, P. Smorodin. Upper row: P. Malkov, E. Rahja, S. Galiev, P. Zalutsky, J. Drobnis, Maihail Tomsky, M. Kharitonov, Adolf Joffe, David Riazanov, Badaev, L. Serebryakov, Mikhail Lashevich.
Lenin was bitterly disappointed with the result as he hoped it would legitimize the October Revolution. When it opened on 5th January, 1918, Victor Chernov, leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries, was elected President. When the Assembly refused to support the programme of the new Soviet Government, the Bolsheviks walked out in protest. Later that day, Lenin announced that the Constituent Assembly had been dissolved. Soon afterwards all opposition political groups, including the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and the Constitutional Democratic Party, were banned in Russia.
Riazanov disagreed with this policy and as a result of the elections, favoured a coalition government. He also objected to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and in 1918 he resigned in protest but was later readmitted to the Bolshevik Party. He helped establish the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences and in 1920 and worked alongside such figures as Nikolai Sukhanov and Isaak Rubin. Riazanov wrote at this time: "I am not a Bolshevik, I am not a Menshevik, I am not a Leninist. I am only a marxist, and, as a marxist, I am a communist"
Riazanov attended the 2nd World Congress of the Communist International as a member of the Russian delegation. Victor Serge met him during this period: "I was on very close terms with several of the scientific staff at the Marx-Engels Institute, headed by David Borisovich Riazanov, who had created there a scientific establishment of noteworthy quality. Riazanov, one of the founders of the Russian working-class movement, was, in his sixtieth year, at the peak of a career whose success might appear exceptional in times so cruel. He had devoted a great part of his life to a severely scrupulous inquiry into the biography and works of Marx - and the Revolution heaped honor on him, and in the Party his independence of outlook was respected. Alone, he had never ceased to cry out against the death penalty, even during the Terror, never ceased to demand the strict limitation of the rights of the Cheka and its successor, the GPU. Heretics of all kinds, Menshevik Socialists or Oppositionists of Right or Left, found peace and work in his Institute, provided only that they had a love of knowledge."
Riazanov remained a critic of Lenin's government. During the Russian Civil War he tirelessly demanded the abolition of the death penalty. Roy A. Medvedev, has pointed out in Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (1971) that in May 1921 at the 4th All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions, Riazanov and his friend Maihail Tomsky clashed with Joseph Stalin over the economic policy of the government: "At that meeting D. B. Riazanov sharply criticized the Control Commission (CC) and supported the independence of the trade unions from the Party. He introduced a motion that contradicted the line of the CC, including a demagogic proposal for the payment of wages in goods, which caused great excitement among the delegates. It was attractive because of the sharp drop in the purchasing power of money. A majority of the Communist caucus unexpectedly voted for Riazanov's motion rather than the resolution prepared by the Party's Central Committee. Stalin, who was present, tried to get the motion repealed. But his speech lacked convincing arguments; he spoke in a harsh, irritated tone, and made personal attacks on M. P. Tomskii, Riazanov, and the whole caucus." When Riazanov replied, Stalin, instead of criticizing his argument, shouted: "Shut up, you clown!" Riazanov replied: "Don't make a fool of yourself. Everybody knows that theory is not exactly your field." It has been claimed that this comment resulted in Stalin seeking revenge against Riazanov."
In December 1930, Riazanov's colleague, Isaak Rubin, was arrested by the Soviet secret police and charged with participation in a plot to establish an underground organization called the "Union Bureau of Mensheviks." Rubin's sister later reported: "Rubin's position was tragic. He had to confess to what had never existed, and nothing had: neither his former views; nor his connections with the other defendants, most of whom he didn't even know, while others he knew only by chance; nor any documents that had supposedly been entrusted to his safekeeping; nor that sealed package of documents which he was supposed to have handed over to Riazanov. In the course of the interrogation and negotiations with the investigator, it became clear to Rubin that the name of Riazanov would figure in the whole affair, if not in Rubin's testimony, then in the testimony of someone else. And Rubin agreed to tell the whole story about the mythical package. My brother told me that speaking against Riazanov was just like speaking against his own father. That was the hardest part for him, and he decided to make it look as if he had fooled Riazanov, who had trusted him implicitly. My brother stubbornly kept to this position in all his depositions: Riazanov had trusted him personally and he, Rubin, had fooled trustful Riazanov. No one and nothing could shake him from this position. His deposition of February 21 concerning this matter was printed in the indictment and signed by Krylenko on February 23, 1931. The deposition said that Rubin handed Riazanov the documents in a sealed envelope, and asked him to keep them for a while at the Institute. My brother stressed this position in all his statements before and during the trial. At the trial he gave a number of examples which were supposed to explain why Riazanov trusted him so much."
V. V. Sher was another witness who gave evidence against Riazanov. Victor Serge points out in his book, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1951): "Of course his heretical colleagues were often arrested, and he defended them, with all due discretion. He had access to all quarters and the leaders were a little afraid of his frank way of talking. His reputation had just been officially recognized in a celebration of his sixtieth birthday and his life's work when the arrest of the Menshevik sympathizer Sher, a neurotic intellectual who promptly made all the confessions that anyone pleased to dictate to him, put Riazanov beside himself with rage. Having learnt that a trial of old Socialists was being set in hand, with monstrously ridiculous confessions foisted on them, Riazanov flared up and told member after member of the Politburo that it was a dishonor to the regime, that all this organized frenzy simply did not stand up and that Sher was half-mad anyway."
Roy A. Medvedev, who has carried out a detailed investigation of the case, argued in Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (1971) that the Union Bureau of Mensheviks did not exist. "The political trials of the late twenties and early thirties produced a chain reaction of repression, directed primarily against the old technical intelligentsia, against Cadets who had not emigrated when they could have, and against former members of the Social Revolutionary, Menshevik, and nationalist parties."
Isaak Rubin was sentenced to a 5-year term of imprisonment. This testimony of Rubin was used in building a case against Riazanov, Nikolai Sukhanov and other colleagues at the Marx-Engels Institute. Riazanov was dismissed as director of the institute in February 1931, and expelled from the Communist Party. Riazanov was arrested by Cheka but as he refused to confess he did not appear in court and instead was sent into exile to the the city of Saratov. Over the next six years he worked at the university library.
Boris Souvarine pointed out: "Riazanov was arrested, imprisoned and deported without any form of trial, the work of the Institute was suspended, and almost all of his collaborators were recalled. An omnipotent and autocratic power had condemned him without trial, and without even allowing him to be heard. The last refuge of social science and marxist culture in Russia had ceased to exist. With this barbarous exploit, the dictatorship of the secretariat has perhaps delivered a mortal blow at a great and disinterested servant of the proletariat and of communism. It has surely lost a precious source of knowledge, and destroyed a study centre unique in the world. But it may at least at the same time have dispelled the last mirage capable of creating illusions abroad, and by revealing its real nature, proved the absolute incompatibility between post-Leninist Bolshevism and marxism."
In 1937 Riazanov was arrested again and accused of being involved in a plot with Leon Trotsky against Joseph Stalin. After a brief secret trial he was executed on 21st January, 1938. Riazanov was posthumously rehabilitated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1958. This was confirmed by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.
Primary Sources
(1) The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979)
Riazanov began his revolutionary work in 1887 in Odessa and St. Petersburg. For many years he lived abroad. He became a Menshevik after the Second Congress of the RSDLP. From 1905 to 1907 he worked in the Social Democratic fraction of the State Duma and the trade unions. In 1911 he lectured at the Party School in Longjumeau. On the instructions of the German Social Democrats, he worked on the publication of the works of K. Marx and F. Engels (two volumes were published in 1916) and the history of the First International.
After the February Revolution of 1917, Riazanov became a member of the Mezhraionnaia Organization, which subsequently joined the Bolshevik Party. He was active in trade union work. After the October Revolution of 1917 he supported the creation of a coalition government that would also include Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. In 1918, Riazanov left the Party because of differences over the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. In the discussion on trade unions of 1920 and 1921 he came out with an anti-Party platform and was dismissed from trade union work.
Riazanov was director of the Marx-Engels Institute from 1921 to 1931. He was editor of the first editions of the works of K. Marx and F. Engels, G. V. Plekhanov, and G. Hegel. He was a delegate to the Seventh through Sixteenth Congresses of the Party. Riazanov was expelled from the ACP(B) in February 1931 for his ties with the Menshevik center abroad.
(2) David Riazanov, speech, Central Committee of the Soviets (14th October, 1917)
The move is not being prepared by the Bolsheviks; the move is being prepared by that policy which in the course of seven months of the revolution had done so much for the bourgeoisie and nothing for the masses.... We don't know the day and hour for the move, but we say to the mass of the people: prepare for the decisive struggle for land and peace, for bread and freedom. If as a result of this policy a government of the worker and peasant masses arises, we will be in the first ranks of the insurgents.
(3) Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (1971)
Stalin was not in the least concerned with changing his opponents' minds or drawing them into the common work. He only sought to break them, to bend them to his will; if this failed, he rudely threw them aside. Unlike Lenin, who could perceive the fine distinction between an erring comrade and an enemy, Stalin saw every opponent as his personal enemy, to be dealt with by any methods that could humiliate and degrade him.
A good illustration of this difference is the contrast between the speeches of Lenin and of Stalin to the Communist caucus of the IVth All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions on May 18, 1921. At that meeting D. B. Riazanov sharply criticized the Control Commission (CC) and supported the independence of the trade unions from the Party. He introduced a motion that contradicted the line of the CC, including a demagogic proposal for the payment of wages in goods, which caused great excitement among the delegates. It was attractive because of the sharp drop in the purchasing power of money.
A majority of the Communist caucus unexpectedly voted for Riazanov's motion rather than the resolution prepared by the Party's Central Committee. Stalin, who was present, tried to get the motion repealed. But his speech lacked convincing arguments; he spoke in a harsh, irritated tone, and made personal attacks on M. P. Tomskii, Riazanov, and the whole caucus. He provoked shouts of protest, yells, and general alarm in the hall. When Riazanov had replied, Stalin, instead of criticizing his argument, shouted: "Shut up, you clown!" Riazanov jumped up and answered in the same way. Tension mounted; even delegates who had voted against Riazanov's resolution condemned Stalin's speech.
Lenin was obliged to interfere in the conflict between the Communist delegates and the Central Committee. His speech went to the heart of the issues and it was persuasive. Although the parts directed against Riazanov and Tomskii were sharply polemical and uncompromising, Lenin refrained from making any personal attacks and insults.
Instead, he won by the unshakable force of his logic. The caucus that had just voted against the resolution of the Central Committee by an overwhelming majority now rescinded Riazanov's motion and approved that of the CC. "This speech," writes a witness, "has remained in my memory as a good example of Lenin's ability to talk with people and to persuade them."
(4) Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1951)
I was on very close terms with several of the scientific staff at the Marx-Engels Institute, headed by David Borisovich Riazanov, who had created there a scientific establishment of noteworthy quality. Riazanov, one of the founders of the Russian working-class movement, was, in his sixtieth year, at the peak of a career whose success might appear exceptional in times so cruel. He had devoted a great part of his life to a severely scrupulous inquiry into the biography and works of Marx - and the Revolution heaped honor on him, and in the Party his independence of outlook was respected. Alone, he had never ceased to cry out against the death penalty, even during the Terror, never ceased to demand the strict limitation of the rights of the Cheka and its successor, the GPU. Heretics of all kinds, Menshevik Socialists or Oppositionists of Right or Left, found peace and work in his Institute, provided only that they had a love of knowledge. He was still the man who had told a Conference to its face: "I am not one of those Old Bolsheviks who for twenty years were described by Lenin as old fools..."
I had met him a number of times: stout, strong-featured, beard and mustache thick and white, attentive eyes, Olympian forehead, stormy temperament, ironic utterance... Of course his heretical colleagues were often arrested, and he defended them, with all due discretion. He had access to all quarters and the leaders were a little afraid of his frank way of talking. His reputation had just been officially recognized in a celebration of his sixtieth birthday and his life's work when the arrest of the Menshevik sympathizer Sher, a neurotic intellectual who promptly made all the confessions that anyone pleased to dictate to him, put Riazanov beside himself with rage. Having learnt that a trial of old Socialists was being set in hand, with monstrously ridiculous confessions foisted on them, Riazanov flared up and told member after member of the Politburo that it was a dishonor to the regime, that all this organized frenzy simply did not stand up and that Sher was half-mad anyway.
During the trial of the so-called "Menshevik Center," the defendant Rubin, one of Riazanov's protégé, suddenly brought his name into the case, accusing him of having hidden in the Institute documents of the Socialist International concerned with war against the Soviet Union! Everything that was told to the audience was engineered in advance, so this sensational revelation was inserted to order. Summoned on that very night before the Politburo, Riazanov had a violent exchange with Stalin. "Where are the documents?" shouted the General Secretary. Riazanov replied vehemently, "You won't find them anywhere unless you've put them there yourself!" He was arrested, jailed, and deported to a group of little towns on the Volga, doomed to penury and physical collapse; librarians received the order to purge his writings and his editions of Marx from their stocks. To anybody who knew the policy of the Socialist International and the character of its leaders, Fritz Adler, Vandervelde, Abramovich, Otto Bauer, and Bracke, the fabricated charge was utterly and grotesquely implausible. If it had to be admitted as true, Riazanov deserved to die as a traitor, but they merely exiled him....
Was there then no basis of truth at all in the trial of the "Menshevik Center"? Nikolai Nikolavevich Sukhanov (Himmer), a Menshevik won over to the Party, a member of the Petrograd Soviet from its inception in 1917, who had written ten volumes of valuable notes on the beginnings of the Revolution and worked in the Planning Commissions with his fellow defendants Groman, Ginsberg, and Rubin, did have a kind of salon, in which talk between intimates was very free and the situation in the country as of 1930 was judged to be utterly catastrophic, as it undeniably was. In this circle, escape from the crisis was envisaged in terms of a new Soviet Government, combining the best brains of the Party's Right (Rykov, Tomsky, and Bukharin, perhaps), certain veterans of the Russian revolutionary movement, and the legendary army chief Blucher. It must be emphasized that for practically three years between 1930 and 1934, the new totalitarian regime maintained itself by sheer terror, against all rational expectations and with every appearance, all the time, of imminent collapse.
(5) Boris Souvarine, David Riazanov (1931)
Endowed with an exceptional memory and a capacity for work, and easily mastering the four main European languages, he acquired an encyclopedic erudition that was highly regarded outside the confines of his own party. He alone could at the same time arrange and bring to fruition the Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Plekhanov, Kautsky and Lafargue, decipher the mass of unedited materials left behind by Marx and Engels, uncover the bulk of their correspondence, repair the alterations and fill up the gaps in all previous publications, and edit the Marxist Library, then the Library of Materialism (Gassendi, Hobbes, La Mettrie, Helvetius, d'Holbach, Diderot, J. Toland, Priestley and Feuerbach) and Hegel's philosophical works, etc., whilst directing the Institute, filling up libraries, and organising exhibitions.
He was at the same time working conscientiously as a member of the Executive Committee of the Soviets on that body's budgetary commission. He was the first communist elected to the Academy of Sciences. He unceasingly participated in the life of the party and trade unions as a conscious marxist, a democratic communist, in other words, opposed to any dictatorship over the proletariat. When the All-Russian Trades Union Congress of 1921 had at his instigation adopted a resolution that did not conform to the so-called conceptions of "Bolshevism", according to which the trade unions are a passive instrument of the party, whereas Riazonov's resolution allowed them to consider the Central Committee's trade union policy, it took measures to restore order: Tomsky, the Congress chairman, was sent to Turkestan, and Riazonov was forbidden access by the party to his trade union, such as taking the floor during any meeting, or to run a course on it at the university.
He then devoted himself entirely to historical work and marxist culture, outside of the factions and groupings, maintaining his critical spirit and his faculties of judgement intact, preserving the Institute from passing fads, and maintaining the best traditions of scientific, qualified, honest and conscientious work there, a happy contrast with the proceedings of institutions entrusted to servile functionaries....
On the occasion of Riazanov's sixtieth birthday last year the Soviet press showered praises and flowers on this old man, "who works not as a man sixty years old, but like three young men of twenty". The Executive Committee of the Soviets conferred upon him the ridiculous order of the Red Banner of Labour. All the official organisations, the Executive of the Communist International, the Central Committee of the the Party, the Lenin Institute, the Communist Academy, the Academy of Sciences, the state publishers, etc., offered him their warm and hypocritical congratulations. They can be read in the Pravda and Izvestia of the 10th March, and in an extensive collection: Na boiévom postou (Moscow, 1930), followed by eulogistic letters from Kalinin, Rykov and Clara Zetkin, lyrical articles by Deborin, Lunacharsky, Steklov, Lozovsky and Milyutin, and speeches by Pokrovsky, Bukharin and others.
One year later, and Riazanov was arrested, imprisoned and deported without any form of trial, the work of the Institute was suspended, and almost all of his collaborators were recalled. An omnipotent and autocratic power had condemned him without trial, and without even allowing him to be heard. The last refuge of social science and marxist culture in Russia had ceased to exist.
With this barbarous exploit, the dictatorship of the secretariat has perhaps delivered a mortal blow at a great and disinterested servant of the proletariat and of communism. It has surely lost a precious source of knowledge, and destroyed a study centre unique in the world. But it may at least at the same time have dispelled the last mirage capable of creating illusions abroad, and by revealing its real nature, proved the absolute incompatibility between post-Leninist Bolshevism and marxism.
(6) B. I. Rubina, Memoir (undated)
Rubin's position was tragic. He had to confess to what had never existed, and nothing had: neither his former views; nor his connections with the other defendants, most of whom he didn't even know, while others he knew only by chance; nor any documents that had supposedly been entrusted to his safekeeping; nor that sealed package of documents which he was supposed to have handed over to Riazanov.
In the course of the interrogation and negotiations with the investigator, it became clear to Rubin that the name of Riazanov would figure in the whole affair, if not in Rubin's testimony, then in the testimony of someone else. And Rubin agreed to tell the whole story about the mythical package. My brother told me that speaking against Riazanov was just like speaking against his own father. That was the hardest part for him, and he decided to make it look as if he had fooled Riazanov, who had trusted him implicitly. My brother stubbornly kept to this position in all his depositions: Riazanov had trusted him personally and he, Rubin, had fooled trustful Riazanov. No one and nothing could shake him from this position. His deposition of February 21 concerning this matter was printed in the indictment and signed by Krylenko on February 23, 1931. The deposition said that Rubin handed Riazanov the documents in a sealed envelope, and asked him to keep them for a while at the Institute. My brother stressed this position in all his statements before and during the trial. At the trial he gave a number of examples which were supposed to explain why Riazanov trusted him so much...
Putting the problem in such a way ruined the prosecutor's plan. He asked Rubin point-blank: "Didn't you establish any organizational connection?" Rubin replied, "No, there was no organizational connection, there was only his great personal trust in me." Then Krylenko asked for a recess. When he and the other defendants got to another room, Krylenko said to Rubin: "You did not say what you should have said. After the recess I will call you back to the stand, and you will correct your reply." Rubin answered sharply: "Do not call me any more. I will again repeat what I said." The result of this conflict was that, instead of the agreed three years in prison, Rubin was given five, and in his concluding speech Krylenko gave a devastating characterization of Rubin like that of no one else. Everyone interested in the case could not understand why there was so much spite and venom in this characterization.
Rubin set himself the goal of doing everything in his power to "shield" Riazanov.... At the trial the possibility of defining in this way his position with respect to Riazanov gave Rubin a certain moral satisfaction. But these legal subtleties made little sense to anyone else. Politically Riazanov was compromised, and Rubin was stricken from the list of people who have the right to a life worthy of man. Rubin himself, in his own consciousness, struck himself from the list of such people as soon as he began to give his "testimony." It is interesting what my brother felt when they took him back to Moscow from Suzdal. When, sick and tortured, he was put into the sleigh, he remembered, in his words, how self-assured and internally strong he had been when he came to Suzdal, and how he was leaving morally broken, destroyed, degraded to a state of complete hopelessness. Rubin understood perfectly well that by his "confession" he had put an end to his life as an honorable, uncorrupted worker and achiever in his chosen field of scholarship.
But that was not the main thing; the main thing was that he was destroyed as a man. Rubin understood perfectly well what repercussions his confession would have. Why had Rubin borne false witness against himself? Why had he also named Riazanov? Why had he violated the most elementary, most primitive concepts of human behavior? Everyone knew with what mutual respect these two men were connected, Rubin and Riazanov. Riazanov who was considerably older than Rubin, saw in him a talented Marxist scholar who had devoted his life to the study and popularization of Marxism. Riazanov had trusted him unreservedly; he himself was bewildered by what had happened. Here I want to recount an episode, a very painful one, the confrontation between Rubin and Riazanov. The confrontation took place in the presence of an investigator. Rubin, pale and tormented, turned to Riazanov, saying, "David Borisovich, you remember I handed you a package." Whether Riazanov said anything, and precisely what, I don't remember for sure. My brother right then was taken to his cell; in his cell he began to beat his head against the wall. Anyone who knew how calm and self-controlled Rubin was can understand what a state he had been brought to. According to rumors, Riazanov used to say that he could not understand what had happened to Isaac Il'ich.
The defendants in the case of the "Union Bureau" were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, and all fourteen men were transferred to the political prison in the town of Verkhneural'sk. Rubin, sentenced to five years, was subjected to solitary confinement. The others, who received terms of ten, eight, and five years, were placed several men to a cell. Rubin remained in solitary confinement throughout his imprisonment. During his confinement he continued his scholarly work. Rubin became sick in prison, and lip cancer was suspected. In connection with this sickness, in January, 1933, he was taken to Moscow, to the hospital in Butyrskaia Prison. While in the hospital Rubin was visited twice by GPU officials who offered to make his situation easier, to free him, to enable him to do research. But both times Rubin refused, understanding the price that is paid for such favors. After spending six to eight weeks in the prison hospital, he was taken back to the political prison in Verkhneural'sk. . . . A year later, in 1934, Rubin was released on a commuted sentence, and exiled to the town of Turgai, then an almost unpopulated settlement in the desert. Aside from Rubin there were no other exiles there.
After several months at Turgai, Rubin was permitted to settle in the town of Aktiubinsk.... He got work in a consumer cooperative, as a plan economist. In addition he continued to do his own scholarly work. In the summer of 1935, his wife became seriously sick. My brother sent a telegram asking me to come. I went right away to Aktiubinsk; my brother's wife lay in the hospital, and he himself was in a very bad condition. A month later, when his wife had recovered, I went home to Moscow.... My brother told me that he did not want to return to Moscow, he did not want to meet his former circle of acquaintances. That showed how deeply he was spiritually shaken by all that he had been through. Only his great optimism that was characteristic of him and his deep scholarly interests gave him the strength to live.
In the fall of 1937, during the mass arrests of that time, my brother was again arrested. The prison in Aktiubinsk was overcrowded, the living conditions of the prisoners were terrifying. After a short stay in the prison, he was transferred somewhere outside of Aktiubinsk. We could find out nothing more about him.