Nikolay Nikolayevich Krestinsky (; 13 October 1883 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet

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 A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates for, a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective to describe something producing a major and sudden impact on society. Definition The term—bot ...

and

politician A politician is a person who participates in Public policy, policy-making processes, usually holding an elective position in government. Politicians represent the people, make decisions, and influence the formulation of public policy. The roles ...

who served as the Responsible Secretary of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

. Born in

Mogilev Mogilev (; , ), also transliterated as Mahilyow (, ), is a city in eastern Belarus. It is located on the Dnieper, Dnieper River, about from the Belarus–Russia border, border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and from Bryansk Oblast. As of 2024, ...

to a Ukrainian family, Krestinsky studied law at

Saint Petersburg Imperial University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public university, public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the uni ...

, where he embraced revolutionary politics. He became a member 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 1903, and two years later he supported

Vladimir 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 ...

faction following the RSDLP split. Repeatedly arrested, he was exiled to the Urals in 1914, shortly before 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 ...

. After the 1917

February Revolution The February Revolution (), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution or February Coup was the first of Russian Revolution, two revolutions which took place in Russia ...

brought an end to the monarchy, Krestinsky led the Bolsheviks in

Yekaterinburg Yekaterinburg (, ; ), alternatively Romanization of Russian, romanized as Ekaterinburg and formerly known as Sverdlovsk ( ; 1924–1991), is a city and the administrative centre of Sverdlovsk Oblast and the Ural Federal District, Russia. The ci ...

before returning to Petrograd. He was named People's Commissar for Finance and elected to 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 ...

. After the death of

Yakov Sverdlov Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov ( – 16 March 1919) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A key Bolshevik organizer of the October Revolution of 1917, Sverdlov served as chairman of the Secretariat of the Russian Communist Party from ...

, Krestinsky also served as Responsible Secretary of the Russian Communist Party. Krestinsky was an ally of

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...

and supported the

Left Opposition The Left Opposition () was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) from 1923 to 1927 headed '' de facto'' by Leon Trotsky. It was formed by Trotsky to mount a struggle against the perceived bureaucratic degeneration within th ...

. With the rise of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

, Krestinsky gradually fell from power and lost his positions in the government, save for his post as Soviet ambassador to Germany. He eventually repudiated his opposition and capitulated to Stalin. Krestinsky was arrested in 1937 in 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 ...

and charged with treason. He was found guilty in the 1938 Trial of the Twenty-One and executed.

Origins

Krestinsky was born in the town of

, in what is now Mogilev Region of

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

in to the family of a teacher. His family was Ukrainian. He was educated at the Vilno (Vilnius) Gymnasium and studied law at St Petersburg University. After graduating in 1907, he worked for ten years as a barrister and barrister's assistant.

Rise

Nikolay Krestinsky Voldemar Aussem Berlin 1924

Having become radicalised when he first entered university, Krestinsky joined the

Russian Social Democratic Labor 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 ...

in Vilno in 1903. From 1905, he supported its

faction, led by

. He was arrested in Vilno in 1904, then again in St Petersburg in February 1905, but was released both times, pending a trial. He was arrested again, twice, during the

1905 revolution The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire which began on 22 January 1905 and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906, t ...

, but released under an amnesty. In total, he was arrested nine times. On the outbreak of war in 1914, he was deported to the Urals. After the

, which overthrew monarchy in Russia, Krestinsky was chairman of the

and Urals committee of the Bolshevik party, and was elected a member of the Central Committee in July 1917. After 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 ...

, he moved to Petrograd (St Petersburg) as deputy head of the state bank. In August 1918 – 1921, he was People's Commissar for Finance. In January 1918, during the dispute over whether to sign the

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a separate peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria), by which Russia withdrew from World War I. The treaty, whi ...

to take Russia out of the war, Krestinsky was one of just two members of the Central Committee to vote to reject the treaty and fight a 'revolutionary war' with Germany, but in March 1918, to avoid a split that might have driven Lenin, he ended his opposition. In March 1921, after the early death of

, Krestinsky received a sudden promotion to the post of Secretary of the Central Committee. He was also elected a member of the original five-member

, and of the first

Orgburo The Orgburo (), also known as the Organisational Bureau (), of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union existed from 1919 to 1952, when it was abolished at the 19th Congress of the Communist Party and its functions wer ...

. At first, he was the only Central Committee secretary. In 1920–21 he was the senior one of three.

Fall from power

As the official responsible for party appointments, Krestinsky took a conciliatory line towards dissenters, for which he was openly attacked by

Grigory Zinoviev Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev (born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky; – 25 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A prominent Old Bolsheviks, Old Bolshevik, Zinoviev was a close associate of Vladimir Lenin prior to ...

, who was backed up by

and others who later formed the Stalinist faction within the party. At the same time,

was under attack from the same direction in a dispute over the role of the trade unions, in which Krestinsky backed Trotsky, against Lenin. At the end of the Tenth Party Congress he was sacked as the party's responsible secretary in April 1921, and replaced by

Vyacheslav Molotov Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (; – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician, diplomat, and revolutionary who was a leading figure in the government of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s, as one of Joseph Stalin's closest allies. ...

(and a year later by Stalin), and removed from the Politburo, Orgburo, and the Central Committee. During the powers struggle that followed Lenin's death, Krestinsky supported Trotsky and the

. He and Trotsky spent hours discussing the situation in the Soviet Union when Trotsky visited Berlin incognito for about six weeks in April–May 1926. Krestinsky told him that Stalin was "a bad man, with yellow eyes.". But on 27 November 1927, he wrote to Trotsky saying that he no longer agreed with the programme of the Left Opposition. In April 1928, he publicly repudiated the opposition, claiming that he had never been an active member, making him one of the first Trotskyists to capitulate to Stalin.

Diplomatic career

Krestinsky was Soviet ambassador in Germany from 1921 to 1930. In this capacity, he negotiated the first trade agreement with Hungary, in 1925, and the German-Soviet treaty of 1926. In 1930, he was recalled to Moscow and appointed Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, in place of

Maxim Litvinov Maxim Maximovich Litvinov (; born Meir Henoch Wallach-Finkelstein; 17 July 1876 – 31 December 1951) was a Russian Empire, Russian revolutionary and prominent Soviet Union, Soviet statesman and diplomat who served as Ministry of Foreign Aff ...

, who had been promoted to People's Commissar. The post was an important and sensitive one because of Soviet Russia's crucial and delicate relationship with Germany at the time, but not nearly as important as his previous posts.

Show trial and death

In March 1937, early in the

, Krestinsky was suddenly transferred to the post of USSR Deputy People's Commissar for Justice. He was arrested in May 1937. In prison he was beaten unconscious, and, according to a doctor who worked in Lefortovo Prison, was beaten so badly that there was not any part of his back that was not discoloured by bruises. After a 'confession' had been forced out of him, he was put on trial (as part of the Trial of the Twenty One) on 12 March 1938. While almost all of the other defendants admitted their guilt during the Moscow Trials, on the first day of the trial, 2 March, Krestinsky told the presiding judge, Vasili Ulrikh:

I do not plead guilty. I am not a Trotskyite. I was never a member of the 'bloc of Rights and Trotskyites', of whose existence I was not aware. Nor have I committed any of the crimes with which I personally am charged; in particular I -plead not guilty of having had connections with the German intelligence service.

The following day, he made a total reversal of his position:

Yesterday, under the influence of a momentary keen feeling of false shame, evoked by the atmosphere of the dock and the painful impression created by the public reading of the indictment, which was aggravated by my poor health, I could not bring myself to tell the truth, I could not bring myself to say that I was guilty. And instead of saying, "Yes, I am guilty," I almost mechanically answered, "No, I am not guilty."

Such a reversion was a rare episode in the

show trials A show trial is a public trial in which the guilt or innocence of the defendant has already been determined. The purpose of holding a show trial is to present both accusation and verdict to the public, serving as an example and a warning to ...

, of the late 1930s. It caused speculation that the person brought back on the second day was not Krestinsky, but someone recruited to play him, or that he had been hypnotised. He went on to 'confess' that he was a German agent, and that he had met Trotsky in the Tyrol resort of

Merano Merano (, ; ) or Meran () is a (municipality) in South Tyrol, Northern Italy. Generally best known for its Spa town, spa resorts, it is located within a Depression (geology), basin, surrounded by mountains standing up to Height above mean sea ...

in October 1933 to receive instructions on sabotage. However, Trotsky was under constant surveillance by Soviet agents at the time and

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

records from the 1950s do not mention any trip to Merano. Trotsky told the ''New York Herald Tribune'' that he had never been to the resort and had not spoken to Krestinsky since 1927. Krestinsky was sentenced to death and executed on 15 March 1938. He was partially exonerated during

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

's destalinisation program, when, on 27 October 1963,

Izvestia ''Izvestia'' ( rus, Известия, r=Izvestiya, p=ɪzˈvʲesʲtʲɪjə, "The News") is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia. Founded in February 1917, ''Izvestia'', which covered foreign relations, was the organ of the Supreme Soviet of th ...

carried an article by the former soviet ambassador to Great Britain,

Ivan Maisky Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky (also transliterated as "Maysky"; ) (19 January 1884 – 3 September 1975) was a Soviet diplomat, historian and politician who served as the Soviet Union's ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1932 to 1943, includi ...

, praising Krestinsky as a "diplomat of the Leninist school.". He was cleared of all charges during

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

perestroika ''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...

reforms.

Personality

Joseph E. Davies, who was the US ambassador to the USSR in 1938, described Krestinsky in his memoir, ''Mission to Moscow'' as "a short-sighted little man with a rather repulsive face" – but his view must have been coloured by the fact that he accepted the confessions by defendants at the March 1938 show trial, which he attended. He told the US State Department that "if the charges are true a terrible sordid picture of human nature at its worst is being unfolded."

Victor Serge Victor Serge (; born Viktor Lvovich Kibalchich, ; 30 December 1890 – 17 November 1947) was a Belgian-born Russian revolutionary, novelist, poet, historian, journalist, and translator. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks in Janu ...

, who knew him in the 1920s, wrote that:

Family

Krestinsky's Jewish wife, Vera (née Yugenburg), who worked as a doctor, was arrested in February 1938, charged with being the wife of a 'traitor to the Motherland', and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Their 19-year-old daughter, Natalya, a student at a Medical Institute in Moscow, was arrested in June 1939 and exiled to

Krasnoyarsk Krasnoyarsk is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. It is situated along the Yenisey, Yenisey River, and is the second-largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk, with a p ...

territory for three years. She was 'rehabilitated' in 1956.

References

External links