Nikolay Muralov
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Nikolay Ivanovich Muralov (; 7 December 1877 – 1 February 1937) was a
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, ...
revolution In political science, a revolution (, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements ...
ary leader and military commander in
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
, who after 1923 became a member of the Left Opposition. Muralov was a direct participant in both the Revolution of 1905 and the October Revolution of 1917. A personal friend of Leon Trotsky, Muralov was arrested in 1936 during the Great Terror and was a defendant in the so-called "Trial of the Seventeen" in January 1937, after which he was executed. The official Soviet reckoning of Muralov was softened during the 1960s and he was afforded a full posthumous rehabilitation in 1986.


Biography


Early years

Nikolay Ivanovich Muralov was born in 1877 in the farm ''(khutor)'' Grecheskie Roty near Taganrog, a port city on the
Sea of Azov The Sea of Azov is an inland Continental shelf#Shelf seas, shelf sea in Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the narrow (about ) Strait of Kerch, and sometimes regarded as a northern extension of the Black Sea. The sea is bounded by Ru ...
.Nikolay Muralov, "Autobiography," in Georges Haupt and Jean-Jacques Marie, ''Makers of the Russian Revolution: Biographies of Bolshevik Leaders.''
969 Year 969 ( CMLXIX) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar, the 969th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 969th year of the 1st millennium, the 69th year of the 10th century, and the 10th ...
C.I.P. Ferdinand and D.M. Bellos, trans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974; pp. 172-173.
His father had attended a classical gymnasium for six years and had been a volunteer in the Russian Army during the
Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...
, in the process earning Russia's highest military decoration, the
Order of St. George The Order of Saint George () is the highest military decoration of the Russian Federation. It was originally established on 26 November 1769 Julian (7 December 1769 Gregorian) as the highest military decoration of the Russian Empire for commiss ...
, fourth class, for bravery. An educated and cultured man, his father had made the acquaintance of
Alexander Herzen Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (; ) was a Russian writer and thinker known as the precursor of Russian socialism and one of the main precursors of agrarian populism (being an ideological ancestor of the Narodniki, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Trudo ...
and was a political admirer and subscriber to Herzen's thick journal, '' Kolokol.'' His younger brother
Alexander Alexander () is a male name of Greek origin. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here ar ...
, was also involved in the revolutionary movement. Nikolay worked on the farm throughout his youth and was taught to read and write by his father from an early age. At the age of 17, Muralov went away to an agricultural school, graduating three years later. He then worked as an estate manager in the village of Znamenka, Tambov district, and
Nazarov Nazarov (), or Nazarova (feminine; Назарова) is a Russian family name. The surname derives from the given name Nazar (given name), Nazar. The surname may refer to: *Alexander Nazarov (1925–1945), Soviet army officer and Hero of the Sovie ...
, Moscow district. During the late 1890s Muralov was a volunteer in the Tsarist army, serving briefly in the Grenadier Regiment in Moscow before being dismissed for reserve duty at Taganrog. In the fall of 1899, Muralov went to the town of
Maikop Maykop is the capital city of Adygea, Russia, located on the right bank of the Belaya River. It borders Maykopsky District, from which it is administratively and municipally independent, to the east and south; Giaginsky District to the north, a ...
in the
Caucasus Mountains The Caucasus Mountains * * Azerbaijani: , * * * * * * * * * * * is a mountain range at the intersection of Asia and Europe. Stretching between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, they are surrounded by the Caucasus region ...
and worked as a manager of a distillery and a creamery. It was there that he was first exposed to
Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
political literature, including the official newspaper of 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 ...
, ''
Iskra ''Iskra'' (, , ''the Spark'') was a fortnightly political newspaper of Russian socialist emigrants established as the official organ of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). History ''Iskra'' was published in exile and then smuggl ...
,'' which he read as part of an underground political circle.


Political career

Early in 1902, Muralov traveled to Moscow, where he was arrested by the Tsarist political police for the first time. He was held for three months before being released. Muralov joined another underground Marxist circle at
Serpukhov Serpukhov ( rus, Серпухов, p=ˈsʲerpʊxəf) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in Moscow Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Oka River, Oka and the Nara (Oka), Nara Rivers, 99 kilometers (62 miles) south fro ...
, Moscow Oblast, later that same year and became involved in the ''
zemstvo A zemstvo (, , , ''zemstva'') was an institution of local government set up in consequence of the emancipation reform of 1861 of Imperial Russia by Emperor Alexander II of Russia. Nikolay Milyutin elaborated the idea of the zemstvo, and the fi ...
'' movement. He took a job as an assistant
agronomist An agriculturist, agriculturalist, agrologist, or agronomist (abbreviated as agr.) is a professional in the science, practice, and management of agriculture and agribusiness. It is a regulated profession in Canada, India, the Philippines, the Uni ...
in the nearby town of
Podolsk Podolsk ( rus, Подольск, p=pɐˈdolʲsk) is an industrial city, center of Podolsk Urban Okrug, Moscow Oblast, Russia, located on the Pakhra River (a tributary of the Moskva River). Population: History The first mentions of the vill ...
in 1903, joining the
Bolshevik Party 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 ...
at this time. In the fall of 1905, Muralov made his way to Moscow, where he took an active part in 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 ...
. He remained in the city until the rebellion's suppression by the military in January 1906, participating further in the revolutionary movement in the Don region and at Taganrog, where he came to be regarded as a party specialist in agricultural affairs. He was arrested at Taganrog for a second time later that same year and was imprisoned at Nikolaev for a protracted period. After his release, Muralov returned briefly to Moscow before taking a job in the Tula district as an estate manager in 1907. There he helped open a tearoom, disguised as a unit of the Temperance Society, but in reality a cover for the underground political movement. Muralov was drafted into the military during
World War I 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 ...
, serving in infantry and transport regiments until the outbreak of the
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 ...
in 1917. After that time he became active as an organizer of the Bolshevik faction in the military, helping to establish the soldiers' section of the
Moscow Soviet The Moscow City Council () in short Mossoviet (), an abbreviation of Moscow Soviet (), was established following the February Revolution . Initially it was a parallel, shadow city administration of Moscow, Russia run by left-wing parties. Follow ...
. 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 ...
he was a member of the Moscow
Revolutionary Military Council The Revolutionary Military Council (), sometimes called the Revolutionary War Council Brian PearceIntroductionto Fyodor Raskolnikov s "Tales of Sub-lieutenant Ilyin." or ''Revvoyensoviet'' (), was the supreme military authority of Soviet Rus ...
(RVS) and part of the revolutionary headquarters staff. He led a detachment to capture the Moscow radio station and to open the prisons, freeing political prisoners. Muralov signed the order of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee and on the same day was appointed chief Commissar of the
Moscow Military District The Order of Lenin Moscow Military District () is a Military districts of Russia, military district of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Originally it was a district of the Imperial Russian Army until the Russian Empire's collapse in 191 ...
. He was a member of the RVS of the 3rd Army 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 ...
. At the end of the civil war Muralov was named a member of the governing Collegium of the
People's Commissariat of Agriculture The People's Commissariat for Agriculture, abbreviated as ''Narkomzem'' was established in the RSFSR following the October Revolution. When the RSFSR joined the other Soviet republics to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), agricul ...
. He also continued to serve as a district commander of the Red Army in the Moscow Military District and the North Caucus Military District.


In opposition

From 1925 he was a member of the Central Control Commission of the Russian Communist Party (b) and from 1925 to 1927 he was head of the naval inspection of the Workers' and Peasants' inspection of the USSR and rector of Russian State Agrarian University. Muralov was one of a handful of close personal friends of Leon Trotsky during his Russian interlude.Jean-Jacques Marie, "Nikolay Ivanovich Muralov," in Georges Haupt and Jean-Jacques Marie, ''Makers of the Russian Revolution: Biographies of Bolshevik Leaders.''
969 Year 969 ( CMLXIX) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar, the 969th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 969th year of the 1st millennium, the 69th year of the 10th century, and the 10th ...
C.I.P. Ferdinand and D.M. Bellos, trans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974; pp. 173-175.
He became a signatory to the dissident Declaration of the 46 in October 1923, which ushered in a period of oppositionist political activity. Muralov spoke in defense of the Left Opposition at the 15th Congress of the VKP(b) in December 1927, during which he was heckled mercilessly. Following the congress he was expelled from the VKP(b) and assigned to rural work in
Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
. Muralov was one of four signatories of a letter to the 16th Congress of the VKP(b) in 1930, a document which demanded free expression for all political oppositions. He continued to work in Siberian agriculture, but refused to denounce either his friend Trotsky or his political past, gaining repute as the last of the leading Bolsheviks to have rejected such measures.


Arrest and trial

Muralov was arrested by the
Soviet secret police There were a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The Okhrana was abolished by the Provisional government after the first revolution of 1917, and the first secret police after the October Revolution, created by Vladimir Leni ...
(OGPU) on April 17, 1936. He was named as one of eight unindicted co-conspirators in the so-called
Kemerovo Trial Kemerovo ( rus, Ке́мерово, p=ˈkʲemʲɪrəvə) is an industrial city and the administrative center of Kemerovo Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Iskitimka and Tom Rivers, in the major coal mining region of the Kuznetsk B ...
of October 1936, a highly publicized trial which asserted that Trotskyist saboteurs had caused an explosion at the Kemerovo Central Mine — a blast in which 12 miners had died and 14 others suffered serious injury. The Kemerovo mine explosion and trial, which had resulted in death sentences for all nine defendants, was made the basis for the second of three great public
show trial A show trial is a public trial in which the guilt (law), 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 d ...
s of 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 ...
— the so-called " Trial of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center." This trial, held over an eight-day period in January 1937, is best remembered for its lead defendants Iurii Piatakov and
Karl Radek Karl Berngardovich Radek (; 31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a revolutionary and writer active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I and a Communist International leader in the Soviet Union after the Russian ...
. Muralov was another of the leading defendants in this public spectacle. Muralov's abasement was complete during the proceeding. During his direct testimony answering the questions of prosecutor
Andrey Vyshinsky Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky (; ) ( – 22 November 1954) was a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat. He is best known as a Procurator General of the Soviet Union, state prosecutor of Joseph Stalin's Moscow Trials and in the Nuremberg trial ...
, Muralov indicated that he had declined to provide the confession demanded by the secret police until December 5, 1936 — eight months after his arrest."Evening Session, January 25: Examination of the Defendant Muralov," ''Moscow News,'' Feb. 3-10, 1937, pp. 17-18. After this date, he signed on to an elaborate confession. He dutifully testified:
"The beginning of my downfall must be dated from the moment I signed the first document against the Party. That was the declaration of the 46 of 1923. With this my downfall began. Later I was drawn into the Trotskyite organization and so on right up to my expulsion from the Party and exile to West Siberia."
Muralov asserted:"For more than ten years I was a faithful soldier of Trotsky, the evil-doer of the working class, the
fascist Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...
agent worthy of all our contempt, that enemy of the working class and the Soviet Union." He confessed to have established a Siberian Trotskyist center in
Novosibirsk Novosibirsk is the largest city and administrative centre of Novosibirsk Oblast and the Siberian Federal District in Russia. As of the 2021 Russian census, 2021 census, it had a population of 1,633,595, making it the most populous city in Siber ...
and to have received in 1932 a letter from Trotsky's son, Leon Sedov, letters containing Trotsky's instruction written in invisible ink which "proposed to hasten the terrorist acts against
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 ...
, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, and Kirov." Muralov claimed that he had coordinated the organization of small terrorist cells with several other defendants in the current trial, including Piatakov and Radek, and to have played a part in directly organizing an assassination attempt against Stalin's right-hand man, V.M.Molotov in which a car in which he was traveling was to intentionally be driven and rolled at high speed into a ravine. In accord with the severity of the crimes to which he confessed, Muralov was sentenced to death. Following his death sentence, Muralov drafted an appeal for commutation of his sentence to the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party. He wrote:
"I am sixty years old. I want to devote the remainder of my life fully to the good of constructing our great Motherland. I take the liberty of beseeching the Central Executive Committee of the USSR to spare my life."
The appeal was to be unsuccessful.


Death and legacy

Nikolay Ivanovich Muralov was executed on February 1, 1937. An official softening of the historical assessment of Muralov began even under the regime of
Leonid Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (19 December 190610 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until Death and state funeral of Leonid Brezhnev, his death in 1982 as w ...
. In 1966 the newspaper ''Sovetskaia Rossiia'' lauded the
Old Bolshevik The Old Bolsheviks (), also called the Old Bolshevik Guard or Old Party Guard, were members of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Many Old Bolsheviks became leading politi ...
Muralov as "a courageous and stalwart Leninist, and illustrious statesman, and a solid Bolshevik."Quoted in Jean-Jacques Marie, "Nikolay Ivanovich Muralov," op. cit., p. 175. Muralov was formally accorded
posthumous rehabilitation Rehabilitation (, transliterated in English as ''reabilitatsiya'' or academically rendered as ''reabilitacija'') was a term used in the context of the former Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states. Beginning after the death of Stalin in 1953, t ...
in April 1986.


Footnotes


External links

* Leaders of the Russian Revolution: Nikolai Muralov (1877–1937
Part 1


{{DEFAULTSORT:Muralov, Nikolay 1877 births 1937 deaths Military personnel from Donetsk Oblast People from Don Host Oblast Russian Social Democratic Labour Party members Old Bolsheviks Left communists Left Opposition Russian Trotskyists Russian military personnel of World War I Soviet military personnel of the Russian Civil War Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner Trial of the Seventeen Great Purge victims from Ukraine Executed revolutionaries Soviet rehabilitations