Andrei Sergeyevich Bubnov (; – 1 August 1938) was a Russian

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

revolutionary leader,

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

politician and military leader, member of the Left Opposition, and an important Bolshevik figure in Ukraine.

Life

Early career

Bubnov was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk in Vladimir Governorate (now

Ivanovo Ivanovo (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in Russia and the administrative center and largest city of Ivanovo Oblast, located northeast of Moscow and approximately from Yaroslavl, Vladimir, Russia, Vladimir and Kostroma. ...

Ivanovo Oblast Ivanovo Oblast () is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). It had a population of 927,828 as of the Russian Census (2021), 2021 Russian Census. Its three largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, cities are Ivanovo (the administrat ...

, Russia) into a local Russian merchant's family. He studied at the Moscow Agricultural Institute, where he was involved in revolutionary circles beginning in 1900. He failed to graduate from the institute. In 1903, he joined the

wing of the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP) or the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDP), was a socialist political party founded in 1898 in Minsk, Russian Empire. The ...

(RSDLP). In summer 1905, he joined the regional party committee of Ivanono-Voznesensk, and was their delegate to the 4th (1906) and 5th (1907) Party Conferences in Stockholm and London. Between 1907 and 1908, he was a member of the RSDLP's Moscow committee, and of the Bolshevik committee for the Central Industrial Region. He was arrested in 1908. In his autobiography, he stated that he was arrested 13 times during his revolutionary career, and spent four years imprisoned for his political activities. Bubnov AS

On his release from prison in 1909 Bubnov was made an agent of the Central Committee in Moscow. He was arrested again in 1910, and interned in a fortress. After his release in 1911, he was sent to organize workers in

Nizhny Novgorod Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət, t=Lower Newtown; colloquially shortened to Nizhny) is a city and the administrative centre of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast an ...

. From there, he was one of the organisers of the Prague Conference of 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-Bolshevik Central Committee. Afterwards he was sent to St Petersburg to assist in the launch of '' Pravda'', and to work with the Bolshevik faction in the Fourth Duma. Arrested yet again, he was deported to

Kharkov Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

In the Russian Revolution and Civil War

On the outbreak of the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

Bubnov became involved in the anti-war movement in

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

, whence he had been deported after being expelled from St Petersburg. Arrested in August 1914, he was deported to

Poltava Poltava (, ; , ) is a city located on the Vorskla, Vorskla River in Central Ukraine, Central Ukraine. It serves as the administrative center of Poltava Oblast as well as Poltava Raion within the oblast. It also hosts the administration of Po ...

. He moved to

Samara Samara, formerly known as Kuybyshev (1935–1991), is the largest city and administrative centre of Samara Oblast in Russia. The city is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Samara (Volga), Samara rivers, with a population of over 1.14 ...

, where he was arrested in October 1916, and exiled to Siberia in February 1917, but while he was in transit, he heard news of the February Revolution, and made his way back to Moscow. In Moscow, Bubnov was elected to the Moscow Soviet and, at the 6th Party Conference in July 1917, he was elected to the Bolshevik central committee, which would later become the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In August, he moved to Petrograd, where he was a central figure during the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

. On 23 October, two weeks before the revolution, the Central Committee appointed a seven-man political council consisting of

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. This is sometimes regarded as the first

Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the highest organ of the central committee in communist parties. The term is also sometimes used to refer to similar organs in socialist and Islamist parties, such as the UK Labour Party's NEC or the Poli ...

, 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." Bubnov's real importance was as a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee. "It was this body rather than the party 'politburo' which made the military preparations for the revolution." Together, they directed the inner-workings of would become known as the

. His role was to supervise the seizure of the postal and telegraph systems. After the successful execution of the

, he was appointed Commissar for Railways, before being sent to Rostov-on-Don to organise resistance to the newly formed White Army of General Kaledin. Bubnov clashed with Lenin for the first time when he opposed the decision to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that 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. In February 1918, he joined the Left Communists, and moved to Ukraine, to organise partisan detachments in the 'neutral zone' east of the German front line. He and Georgy 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. In October 1918, Bubnov moved to

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

, which was ruled by Hetman Skoropadskiy, with German backing, and later by the Ukrainian nationalist Symon Petliura. Bubnov acted as the chairman of the clandestine Kyiv soviet, retaining that position after the Red Army had taken Kyiv. During the

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

, he was a political commissar with the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

, fighting on the Ukrainian 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. 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 the Kronstadt rebellion, rushed north to take part in suppresing, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. In 1921–22, Bubnov was posted in the

North Caucasus The North Caucasus, or Ciscaucasia, is a subregion in Eastern Europe governed by Russia. It constitutes the northern part of the wider Caucasus region, which separates Europe and Asia. The North Caucasus is bordered by the Sea of Azov and the B ...

. In 1922, he was appointed head of the

Agitprop Agitprop (; from , portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', "propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in the Soviet Union where it referred to popular media, such as literatu ...

department of the Central Committee, which meant he was working alongside Stalin, the new General Secretary.

In the Soviet Union

Bubnov's last act as an oppositionist was to sign the Declaration of 46 in October 1923, which was a call for greater party democracy. The Declaration was organised and penned by future members of the Left Opposition, who 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, an ardent Trotsky supporter, was sacked. 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 the Orgburo. Andrey Bubnov and Maria Ulianova 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. Following the Canton Coup on 20 March 1926, he worked out an agreement with the new Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. He then worked with Grigori Voitinsky and Fedor Raskolnikov on the "Preliminary Theses on the Situation in China", which was presented to the ECCI in November and December of that year. In 1929, he replaced Lunacharsky as

People's Commissar Commissar (or sometimes ''Kommissar'') is an English language, English transliteration of the Russian language, Russian (''komissar''), which means 'commissary'. In English, the transliteration ''commissar'' often refers specifically to the pol ...

for Education. As Commissar 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 the First All-Russian Museum Congress held in Moscow in December 1930.

Arrest and death

In October 1937, during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

, 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. He was arrested by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

a few days later, on 17 October 1937. 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. He was expelled from the Party Central Committee. Though the charges were false, Bubnov did confess quite quickly and probably under torture. In fact, he became so co-operative that the NKVD put him in the same cell as Pavel Postyshev, who was refusing to incriminate himself, in the hope that Bubnov would help break his resolve. 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. The modus operandi of the Soviet regime was often to keep secret the fate of particular purged persons: whether they were sent to internal 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 posthumously rehabilitated in March 1956 during the

de-Stalinization De-Stalinization () comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and Khrushchev Thaw, the thaw brought about by ascension of Nik ...

of the Khrushchev thaw. 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

References