David Riazanov
Encyclopedia
David Riazanov born David Borisovich Goldendakh (1870 – 1938), was a political revolutionary, Marxist theoretician
, and archivist
. Riazanov is best remembered as the founder of the Marx-Engels Institute and editor of the first large-scale effort to publish the collected works of these two founders of the modern socialist movement. Riazanov is also remembered as a prominent victim of the Great Terror
of the late 1930s.
father and a Russian
mother in Odessa
, Ukraine
, then part of the Russian empire
. At the age of 15, the future David Riazanov joined the ranks of the Narodnik
revolutionaries attempting to overthrow the autocracy
of the Russian Tsar. Riazanov attended secondary school
in Odessa but was expelled in 1886, not for revolutionary activity or insubordination, but rather due to "hopeless inability."
Riazanov traveled abroad in 1889 and 1891 where he met various Russian Marxists who were building their revolutionary organizations there. Following his second trip, Riazanov was arrested in October 1891 at the Austrian-Russian border by the Okhrana, the tsarist secret police, who had long suspected his revolutionary activity. Riazanov spent 15 months in prison awaiting trial, at which he was convicted and sentenced to an additional four years of katorga
(exile and hard labor). Following completion of his term, Riazanov was subject to 3 years of administrative exile under police supervision in the city of Kishinev, Bessarabia
(today part of Moldova
).
. The next year in Berlin
Riazanov and his co-thinkers established a small Marxist group called "Borba" (Struggle), which attempted to unite the émigré Russian Marxists. Riazanov's group was excluded from the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party that was held in London and Brussels in the summer of 1903. With the party divided between Bolshevik
and Menshevik
wings in the aftermath of this landmark convention, Riazanov and his co-thinkers pointedly declined to join either faction.
In 1903, Riazanov became the first writer to introduce the concept of permanent revolution
to the political literature of Russian Marxism when he published three studies in Geneva
under the title Materials on the Program of the Workers' Party. Riazanov argued, in opposition to the views of G.V. Plekhanov
, that the rise of capitalism
in Russia represented a fundamental departure from the pattern seen elsewhere in Europe. The large size and centralization of Russian industrial firms suggested to Riazanov a relative weakness of Russian middle-classes and a significant possibility that it would be forces of the Russian Marxist movement that would lead the revolution against Tsarist autocracy and thenceforth immediately towards socialism
.
Riazanov returned to Russia shortly after the start of the 1905 Russian Revolution, going to work in the trade union
movement in the capital city of St. Petersburg. The uprising ended in failure by the revolutionaries, however, and Riazanov was arrested and sentenced to deportation once again in 1907.
in the archives of the German Social-Democratic Party
and in the British Museum
in London.
While in London, Riazanov read extensively from the files of the New York Tribune
and other newspapers, collecting material written by Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels for the periodical press. This journalism of Marx and Engels which Riazanov so painstakingly gathered was eventually published in book form in 1917, a publication which cemented Riazanov's reputation as one of the world's leading experts in the literary output of these two leading lights of modern socialism.
During Riazanov's second period of exile he became a close political associate of Leon Trotsky
, contributing regularly to the latter's Vienna
newspaper, Pravda. Riazanov actively supported Trotsky's Interdistrict Committee
(the Mezhraionka), a group which shared the internationalist
views of the Bolsheviks on the question of the war but which disagreed with them on organizational matters, seeking unity with revolutionary elements in the Menshevik camp.
Riazanov was also a participant in the 1915 Zimmerwald Conference
of the Second International
. Riazanov rejected both the social-patriotic
support of World War I
advanced by many Western European socialists as well as the revolutionary defeatism
advanced by the Bolsheviks.
During the war, Riazanov lived in Paris
, where he was a frequent contributor to the Russian-language socialist newspapers Golos (The Voice) and Nashe Slovo (Our Word).
in 1917. There he was active in the growing trade union
movement, helping to form the Russian Railway Union.
Together with the rest of the Mezhraiontsy, Riazanov joined the Bolshevik Party headed by V.I. Lenin in August 1917. Riazanov was opposed to the October Revolution
, however, and was instead involved in an effort to establish a broad coalition government. In the same vein, Riazanov stood as an opponent of the Bolshevik decision to dissolve the elected Constituent Assembly
in January 1918.
In March 1918, the decision of the Bolsheviks to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
prompted Riazanov to resign from the Bolshevik Party — a temporary move which was shortly reversed with a reapplication for membership and readmission.
In 1918, Riazanov helped to establish the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences, an institute later known as the Communist Academy
.
In 1920 Riazanov attended the 2nd World Congress
of the Communist International as a member of the Russian delegation.
Riazanov was an unorthodox member of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks)
[RKP(b)]. He attended the 4th All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions in May 1921, at which he spoke in favor of the independence of the unions from the Communist Party. Working with Communist trade union leader Mikhail Tomsky
, Riazanov also authored a resolution calling for wages to be paid with physical commodities rather than the devalued currency of the day — an action which put the duo at odds with Lenin, Stalin
, and the Central Committee of the RKP(b).
Radical French writer Boris Souvarine
later lauded Riazanov's activity in this period as that of "a conscious marxist, a democratic communist, in other words, opposed to any dictatorship over the proletariat." Riazanov's defense of trade union autonomy against the will of the party came at price, however, as Riazanov was effectively excluded from any active political responsibility after May 1921. Thereafter he assumed the role of Marxist academic.
In 1921 Riazanov established the Marx-Engels Institute, which became one of the main institutions of Soviet philosophy
and history. Riazanov dedicated himself to the collection and publication of the collected writings of Marx and Engels, launching the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), projected to be completed in 36 volumes.
In 1926 the Marx-Engels Institute, under Riazanov's supervision, also began the publication of a multi-volume collection called the Marx-Engels Archive, collecting scholarship on the biography and writings of the founders of Marxism.Trachtenberg, "Introduction" to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, pg. 7.
Riazanov also edited the works of other authors including Diderot
, Feuerbach
, and Hegel. He was a member of the Commission for the Study of the October Revolution and of the Russian Communist Party, commonly known as Istpart.
In 1929, Riazanov was elected to the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
, a research assistant at the Marx-Engels Institute since 1926, 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." As a lawyer, Rubin initially managed to avoid succumbing to false charges made by the interrogator, but he was nonetheless kept under custody and transferred to Suzdal
.
In Suzdal, Rubin was subjected to a cramped punishment cell barely bigger than a man and to the torture of solitary confinement. With his health starting to fail, Rubin was eventually compelled to give false written testimony against David Riazanov to secret police investigators. Rubin claimed that he had kept an envelope containing secret documents of the mythical "Menshevik Center" in his office at the Marx-Engels Institute before discretely passing them along to David Riazanov. Following a show trial
conducted by prosecutor Nikolai Krylenko
, Rubin was found guilty of participation in the plot and sentenced to a 5 year term of imprisonment. This coerced testimony of Rubin was used in building a case against his former employer, David Riazanov.
With his name under a cloud of suspicion and with a show trial
of the purported "Union Bureau of Mensheviks" in the offing, Riazanov was dismissed as director of the Marx-Engels Institute in February 1931.
Soon after the completion of the March trial of the Union Bureau — the so-called 1931 Menshevik Trial — with his name besmirched by false testimony, Riazanov was expelled from the Communist Party and arrested by the secret police, ostensibly "for helping Menshevik counter-revolutionary activity."
Following his arrest Riazanov was not sent to the brutal labor camps of the Gulag
, but was instead subjected to administrative deportation to the city of Saratov
. In Saratov, Riazanov worked for the next six years in a university library. Riazanov's Marx-Engels Institute was consolidated with the Lenin Institute later in 1931 to form the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, under the direction of V.V. Adoratsky
.
During the Ezhovshchina
of 1937, Riazanov was again arrested, this time as a purported member of a "right-opportunist Trotskyist organisation." On 21 January 1938, following a perfunctory trial, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court condemned Riazanov to death and he was executed later that same day.
Riazanov was posthumously rehabilitated
in 1958. He was further rehabilitated in political terms in 1989 as part of the glasnost
campaign of Mikhail Gorbachev
.
According to historian Colum Leckey, David Riazanov's chief achievement lay in the realm of Marxology — acquiring, preparing, and publishing for the first time previously unknown writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Included among these were the works The German Ideology, sections of The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, The Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right, and Dialectics of Nature.
Theoretician (Marxism)
A theoretician is a term from the vernacular of Marxism relating to an individual who observes and writes about the condition or dynamics of society, history, or economics, making use of the main principles of Marxian socialism in the analysis....
, and archivist
Archivist
An archivist is a professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to information determined to have long-term value. The information maintained by an archivist can be any form of media...
. Riazanov is best remembered as the founder of the Marx-Engels Institute and editor of the first large-scale effort to publish the collected works of these two founders of the modern socialist movement. Riazanov is also remembered as a prominent victim of the Great Terror
Great Terror
Great Terror may refer to:* Reign of Terror , a period of extreme violence during the French Revolution, last weeks of which are sometimes referred to as the Red Terror or Great Terror...
of the late 1930s.
Early years
David Borisovich Goldendakh was born 10 March 1870 to a JewishJews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
father and a Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
mother in Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, then part of the Russian empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. At the age of 15, the future David Riazanov joined the ranks of the Narodnik
Narodnik
Narodniks was the name for Russian socially conscious members of the middle class in the 1860s and 1870s. Their ideas and actions were known as Narodnichestvo which can be translated as "Peopleism", though is more commonly rendered "populism"...
revolutionaries attempting to overthrow the autocracy
Autocracy
An autocracy is a form of government in which one person is the supreme power within the state. It is derived from the Greek : and , and may be translated as "one who rules by himself". It is distinct from oligarchy and democracy...
of the Russian Tsar. Riazanov attended secondary school
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
in Odessa but was expelled in 1886, not for revolutionary activity or insubordination, but rather due to "hopeless inability."
Riazanov traveled abroad in 1889 and 1891 where he met various Russian Marxists who were building their revolutionary organizations there. Following his second trip, Riazanov was arrested in October 1891 at the Austrian-Russian border by the Okhrana, the tsarist secret police, who had long suspected his revolutionary activity. Riazanov spent 15 months in prison awaiting trial, at which he was convicted and sentenced to an additional four years of katorga
Katorga
Katorga was a system of penal servitude of the prison farm type in Tsarist Russia...
(exile and hard labor). Following completion of his term, Riazanov was subject to 3 years of administrative exile under police supervision in the city of Kishinev, Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
(today part of Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
).
First period of exile
In 1900, Riazanov went into exileExile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
. The next year in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
Riazanov and his co-thinkers established a small Marxist group called "Borba" (Struggle), which attempted to unite the émigré Russian Marxists. Riazanov's group was excluded from the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party that was held in London and Brussels in the summer of 1903. With the party divided between Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
and Menshevik
Menshevik
The Mensheviks were a faction of the Russian revolutionary movement that emerged in 1904 after a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, both members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. The dispute originated at the Second Congress of that party, ostensibly over minor issues...
wings in the aftermath of this landmark convention, Riazanov and his co-thinkers pointedly declined to join either faction.
In 1903, Riazanov became the first writer to introduce the concept of permanent revolution
Permanent Revolution
Permanent revolution is a term within Marxist theory, established in usage by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels by at least 1850 but which has since become most closely associated with Leon Trotsky. The use of the term by different theorists is not identical...
to the political literature of Russian Marxism when he published three studies in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
under the title Materials on the Program of the Workers' Party. Riazanov argued, in opposition to the views of G.V. Plekhanov
Georgi Plekhanov
Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician. He was a founder of the Social-Democratic movement in Russia and was one of the first Russians to identify himself as "Marxist." Facing political persecution, Plekhanov emigrated to Switzerland in 1880, where...
, that the rise of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
in Russia represented a fundamental departure from the pattern seen elsewhere in Europe. The large size and centralization of Russian industrial firms suggested to Riazanov a relative weakness of Russian middle-classes and a significant possibility that it would be forces of the Russian Marxist movement that would lead the revolution against Tsarist autocracy and thenceforth immediately towards socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
.
Riazanov returned to Russia shortly after the start of the 1905 Russian Revolution, going to work in the trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
movement in the capital city of St. Petersburg. The uprising ended in failure by the revolutionaries, however, and Riazanov was arrested and sentenced to deportation once again in 1907.
Second period of exile
Shortly after his 1907 conviction, Riazanov emigrated to the West. During this second interlude abroad, Riazanov dedicated himself to historical scholarship, studying the history of the International Workingmen's AssociationInternational Workingmen's Association
The International Workingmen's Association , sometimes called the First International, was an international organization which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade union organizations that were based on the working class...
in the archives of the German Social-Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
and in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
in London.
While in London, Riazanov read extensively from the files of the New York Tribune
New York Tribune
The New York Tribune was an American newspaper, first established by Horace Greeley in 1841, which was long considered one of the leading newspapers in the United States...
and other newspapers, collecting material written by Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Frederick Engels for the periodical press. This journalism of Marx and Engels which Riazanov so painstakingly gathered was eventually published in book form in 1917, a publication which cemented Riazanov's reputation as one of the world's leading experts in the literary output of these two leading lights of modern socialism.
During Riazanov's second period of exile he became a close political associate of Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, contributing regularly to the latter's Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
newspaper, Pravda. Riazanov actively supported Trotsky's Interdistrict Committee
Mezhraiontsy
Mezhraiontsy or Mezhraionka , usually translated as the interdistrictites , officially RSDRP , was a small Petrograd-based group within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which existed between 1913 and 1917...
(the Mezhraionka), a group which shared the internationalist
Internationalism (politics)
Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...
views of the Bolsheviks on the question of the war but which disagreed with them on organizational matters, seeking unity with revolutionary elements in the Menshevik camp.
Riazanov was also a participant in the 1915 Zimmerwald Conference
Zimmerwald Conference
The Zimmerwald Conference was held in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, from September 5 through September 8, 1915. It was an international socialist conference, which saw the beginning of the end of the coalition between revolutionary socialists and reformist socialists in the Second International.-...
of the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
. Riazanov rejected both the social-patriotic
Social Patriotism
Social Patriotism is an openly patriotic standpoint which combines patriotism with socialism. It was first identified at the outset of the First World War when a majority of Social Democrats opted to support the war efforts of their respective governments and abandoned socialist internationalism...
support of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
advanced by many Western European socialists as well as the revolutionary defeatism
Defeatism
Defeatism is acceptance of defeat without struggle. In everyday use, defeatism has negative connotation and is often linked to treason and pessimism, or even a hopeless situation such as a Catch-22...
advanced by the Bolsheviks.
During the war, Riazanov lived in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he was a frequent contributor to the Russian-language socialist newspapers Golos (The Voice) and Nashe Slovo (Our Word).
After the 1917 revolution
Riazanov returned to Russia following the February RevolutionFebruary Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...
in 1917. There he was active in the growing trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
movement, helping to form the Russian Railway Union.
Together with the rest of the Mezhraiontsy, Riazanov joined the Bolshevik Party headed by V.I. Lenin in August 1917. Riazanov was opposed to the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, however, and was instead involved in an effort to establish a broad coalition government. In the same vein, Riazanov stood as an opponent of the Bolshevik decision to dissolve the elected Constituent Assembly
Constituent assembly
A constituent assembly is a body composed for the purpose of drafting or adopting a constitution...
in January 1918.
In March 1918, the decision of the Bolsheviks to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, mediated by South African Andrik Fuller, at Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers, headed by Germany, marking Russia's exit from World War I.While the treaty was practically obsolete before the end of the year,...
prompted Riazanov to resign from the Bolshevik Party — a temporary move which was shortly reversed with a reapplication for membership and readmission.
In 1918, Riazanov helped to establish the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences, an institute later known as the Communist Academy
Communist Academy
The Communist Academy was founded in Moscow on June 25, 1918, as the Socialist Academy; it was renamed in 1924...
.
In 1920 Riazanov attended the 2nd World Congress
2nd World Congress of the Comintern
The 2nd World Congress of the Comintern was a gathering of approximately 220 voting and non-voting representatives of Communist and revolutionary socialist political parties from around the world, held in Petrograd and Moscow from July 19 to August 7, 1920...
of the Communist International as a member of the Russian delegation.
Riazanov was an unorthodox member of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks)
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
[RKP(b)]. He attended the 4th All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions in May 1921, at which he spoke in favor of the independence of the unions from the Communist Party. Working with Communist trade union leader Mikhail Tomsky
Mikhail Tomsky
Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky was a factory worker, trade unionist and Bolshevik leader. He was the Soviet leader of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions.Tomsky attempted to form a trade union at his factory in St...
, Riazanov also authored a resolution calling for wages to be paid with physical commodities rather than the devalued currency of the day — an action which put the duo at odds with Lenin, Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, and the Central Committee of the RKP(b).
Radical French writer Boris Souvarine
Boris Souvarine
Boris Souvarine was an Imperial Russian-born French socialist, communist activist, essayist, and journalist.-Early years:...
later lauded Riazanov's activity in this period as that of "a conscious marxist, a democratic communist, in other words, opposed to any dictatorship over the proletariat." Riazanov's defense of trade union autonomy against the will of the party came at price, however, as Riazanov was effectively excluded from any active political responsibility after May 1921. Thereafter he assumed the role of Marxist academic.
In 1921 Riazanov established the Marx-Engels Institute, which became one of the main institutions of Soviet philosophy
Philosophy in the Soviet Union
Philosophical research in the Soviet Union was officially confined to Marxist-Leninist thinking, which theoretically was the basis of objective and ultimate philosophical truth. During the 1920s and 1930s, other tendencies of Russian thought were repressed...
and history. Riazanov dedicated himself to the collection and publication of the collected writings of Marx and Engels, launching the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), projected to be completed in 36 volumes.
In 1926 the Marx-Engels Institute, under Riazanov's supervision, also began the publication of a multi-volume collection called the Marx-Engels Archive, collecting scholarship on the biography and writings of the founders of Marxism.Trachtenberg, "Introduction" to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, pg. 7.
Riazanov also edited the works of other authors including Diderot
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
, Feuerbach
Feuerbach
Feuerbach may refer to:a surname* Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach , German legal scholar* Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach , German mathematician* Ludwig Feuerbach , German philosopher and anthropologist...
, and Hegel. He was a member of the Commission for the Study of the October Revolution and of the Russian Communist Party, commonly known as Istpart.
In 1929, Riazanov was elected to the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
Persecution, death, and legacy
In December 1930, I. I. RubinIsaak Illich Rubin
Isaak Illich Rubin was a Russian economist and is considered to be the most important theorist of his time on the field of Marx's theory of value. His main work Essays on Marx's Theory of Value was published in 1924. During the course of the Great Purge he was executed in 1937.-Main Works:* Rubin,...
, a research assistant at the Marx-Engels Institute since 1926, 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." As a lawyer, Rubin initially managed to avoid succumbing to false charges made by the interrogator, but he was nonetheless kept under custody and transferred to Suzdal
Suzdal
Suzdal is a town in Vladimir Oblast, Russia, situated northeast of Moscow, from the city of Vladimir, on the Kamenka River. Population: -History:...
.
In Suzdal, Rubin was subjected to a cramped punishment cell barely bigger than a man and to the torture of solitary confinement. With his health starting to fail, Rubin was eventually compelled to give false written testimony against David Riazanov to secret police investigators. Rubin claimed that he had kept an envelope containing secret documents of the mythical "Menshevik Center" in his office at the Marx-Engels Institute before discretely passing them along to David Riazanov. Following a show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...
conducted by prosecutor Nikolai Krylenko
Nikolai Krylenko
Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician. Krylenko served in a variety of posts in the Soviet legal system, rising to become People's Commissar for Justice and Prosecutor General of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.Krylenko was an...
, Rubin was found guilty of participation in the plot and sentenced to a 5 year term of imprisonment. This coerced testimony of Rubin was used in building a case against his former employer, David Riazanov.
With his name under a cloud of suspicion and with a show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...
of the purported "Union Bureau of Mensheviks" in the offing, Riazanov was dismissed as director of the Marx-Engels Institute in February 1931.
Soon after the completion of the March trial of the Union Bureau — the so-called 1931 Menshevik Trial — with his name besmirched by false testimony, Riazanov was expelled from the Communist Party and arrested by the secret police, ostensibly "for helping Menshevik counter-revolutionary activity."
Following his arrest Riazanov was not sent to the brutal labor camps of the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
, but was instead subjected to administrative deportation to the city of Saratov
Saratov
-Modern Saratov:The Saratov region is highly industrialized, due in part to the rich in natural and industrial resources of the area. The region is also one of the more important and largest cultural and scientific centres in Russia...
. In Saratov, Riazanov worked for the next six years in a university library. Riazanov's Marx-Engels Institute was consolidated with the Lenin Institute later in 1931 to form the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, under the direction of V.V. Adoratsky
V. V. Adoratsky
V. V. Adoratsky was a Soviet communist historian and political theorist. In 1920, he became assistant manager of the Central Archives Board, and in 1932 a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He wrote a number of works on the Marxist theory of the state and law, and on the philosophy and...
.
During the Ezhovshchina
Great Terror
Great Terror may refer to:* Reign of Terror , a period of extreme violence during the French Revolution, last weeks of which are sometimes referred to as the Red Terror or Great Terror...
of 1937, Riazanov was again arrested, this time as a purported member of a "right-opportunist Trotskyist organisation." On 21 January 1938, following a perfunctory trial, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court condemned Riazanov to death and he was executed later that same day.
Riazanov was posthumously rehabilitated
Rehabilitation (Soviet)
Rehabilitation in the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal...
in 1958. He was further rehabilitated in political terms in 1989 as part of the glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
campaign of Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
.
According to historian Colum Leckey, David Riazanov's chief achievement lay in the realm of Marxology — acquiring, preparing, and publishing for the first time previously unknown writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Included among these were the works The German Ideology, sections of The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, The Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right, and Dialectics of Nature.
Works
- Anglo-russkia otnosheniia v otsenke K. Marksa: Istoriko-kriticheskii etiud. (Ango-Russian Relations in the Estimation of K. Marx: A Historico-Critical Study.) Petrograd: Izdanie Petrogradskago Soveta rabochikh i krasnoarmeiskikh deputatov, 1918.
- G.V. Plekhanov i gruppa "Osvobozhdenie truda". (G.V. Plekhanov and the "Emancipation of Labor" Group.) Moscow: Otdel pechati Moskovskogo Soveta rabochikh i krasnoarmeiskikh deputatov, 1919.
- Международный пролетариат и война. Сборник статей 1914-1916 г. (The International Proletariat and the War: Collection of Articles, 1914-1916.)
- Institut K. Marksa i F. Engelʹsa pri V.Ts.I.K. (The Institute of K. Marx and F. Engels of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.) Moscow: Moskovskii Rabochii, 1923.
- Zadachi profsoiuzov do i v epokhu diktatury proletariata. (The Tasks of the Unions preceding and during the Epoch of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.) Kharkov: Proletarii, 1923.
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Joshua Kunitz, trans. New York: International Publishers, 1927.
- Karl Marx: Man, Thinker, and Revolutionist. A Symposium. (Editor.) London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1927.
- Vzgliady Marksa i Engel'sa na brak i semiu. (The Views of Marx and Engels on Marriage and the Family.) Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1927. —Reissued in translation as Communism and Marriage.
Further reading
- Colum Leckey, "David Riazanov and Russian Marxism," Russian History/Histoire Russe, vol. 22, no. 2 (Summer 1995), pp. 127-153.
- Richard B. Day and Daniel Gaido (eds.), Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record. [2009] Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011.
- A. Deborin (ed.), Na boevom postu: Sbornik k shestidesyatiletiyu D.B. Ryazanova. (On the Battle Line: Collection for the 60th Birthday of D.B. Riazanov.) Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1930. —Pages 623-650 include a complete bibliography of Riazanov's publications.
- Hugo Cerqueira, "David Riazanov e a edição das obras de Marx e Engels". (Texto para discussão n° 352) Belo Horizonte: Cedeplar/UFMG, 2009. In Portuguese.
External links
- David Riazanov Internet Archive, Marxists Internet ArchiveMarxists Internet ArchiveMarxists Internet Archive is a volunteer based non-profit organization that maintains a multi-lingual Internet archive of Marxist writers and other similar authors...
, www.marxists.org/ Retrieved April 7, 2011.