Nestor Lakoba
Encyclopedia
Abkhaz people
The Abkhaz or Abkhazians are a Caucasian ethnic group, mainly living in Abkhazia, a disputed region on the Black Sea coast. A large Abkhazian diaspora population resides in Turkey, the origins of which lie in the emigration from the Caucasus in the late 19th century known as Muhajirism...
Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
leader and a victim of the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
.
Biography
Nestor Lakoba was born in the village of LykhnyLykhny
Lykhny is a village in the Gudauta District of Abkhazia, a disputed region on the Black Sea coast. The village lies along the narrow Black Sea plain of Abkhazia at an elevation of 50 meters above sea level. Lykhny is located five kilometers from the administrative center of Gudauta. There are...
in Abkhazia
Abkhazia
Abkhazia is a disputed political entity on the eastern coast of the Black Sea and the south-western flank of the Caucasus.Abkhazia considers itself an independent state, called the Republic of Abkhazia or Apsny...
and like many Caucasian
Caucasian peoples
This article deals with the various ethnic groups inhabiting the Caucasus region. There are more than50 ethnic groups living in the region.-Peoples speaking Caucasian languages:...
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....
s, began as a bandit persecuted by the Tsarist police
Okhranka
The Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order , usually called "guard department" and commonly abbreviated in modern sources as Okhrana or Okhranka in Russia, was a secret police force of the Russian Empire and part of the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in...
, and he became a personal friend of 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...
's during their time together in the revolutionary underground.
In the years after 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...
, Lakoba greatly helped his career by first being a devoted follower of Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
and then of Stalin, to whom he pledged unconditional allegiance and whose cult of personality
Cult of personality
A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...
he initiated in Abkhazia in the 1930s. In 1921, when Bolshevist Russia
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
conquered
Red Army invasion of Georgia
The Red Army invasion of Georgia also known as the Soviet–Georgian War or the Soviet invasion of Georgia was a military campaign by the Soviet Russian Red Army against the Democratic Republic of Georgia aimed at overthrowing the Social-Democratic government and installing the Bolshevik regime...
Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
, he became Communist Party chief (Chairman of the Central Executive Committee) in Abkhazia
Abkhazia
Abkhazia is a disputed political entity on the eastern coast of the Black Sea and the south-western flank of the Caucasus.Abkhazia considers itself an independent state, called the Republic of Abkhazia or Apsny...
. Abkhazia for the next decade was a Union Republic associated with the Georgian SSR, but in 1931 Stalin made it an Autonomous Republic
Autonomous republics of the Soviet Union
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union were administrative units created for certain nations. The ASSRs had a status lower than the union republics of the Soviet Union, but higher than the autonomous oblasts and the autonomous okrugs....
more firmly under Georgian control. This compelled Lakoba to make regular visits to the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
, in order to intercede on behalf of his homeland.
Lakoba was a short, slightly reserved, and almost entirely deaf man, and he established good relationships with many Kremlin power-brokers, drawn as they were to holidays in his beautiful sub-tropical province. He regularly sent crates of tangerines to Moscow for Stalin and other Caucasians there. He also welcomed those no longer in the leadership's good graces; for instance, he and his brother Mikhail, People's Comissar of internal affairs and later of agriculture in Abkhazia, welcomed the seriously ill 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....
and his wife
Natalia Sedova
Natalia Ivanovna Sedova is best known as the second wife of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary. She was, however, also an active revolutionary in her own right and wrote on cultural matters pertaining to Marxism...
for several months in 1925.
Lakoba managed to stave off collectivization during his leadership of Abkhazia, persuading Stalin to deal gradually with particularly backward peoples. The situation changed after his death, when the process began with a vengeance and landless peasants from central and western Georgia were brought in.
In 1932 Lakoba had made a deadly mistake. He told his friend, high-ranking Georgian Communist Sergo Ordzhonikidze
Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze
Grigol Ordzhonikidze ორჯონიკიძე - Grigol Orjonikidze, , generally known as Sergo Ordzhonikidze ; – February 18, 1937) was a Georgian Bolshevik, later member of the CPSU Politburo and close friend to Joseph Stalin...
, that his main rival, Transcaucasian Party chief Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....
, an acquaintance of both men, had been making some extremely derogatory remarks about Ordzhonikidze, such as "In 1924 Sergo would have shot all Georgians if it hadn't been for me". Ordzhonikidze was enraged, as was Beria when he found out what had occurred. Beria felt compelled to send a series of letters apologizing to Ordzhonikidze, his patron. One of these, dated 18 December 1932, read, in part: "I admire you too much to say those things. I ask you only one thing–don't believe anyone." Beria and Lakoba had despised each other for years, their feud deliberately fuelled by Stalin. Another source of tension may have been the longstanding animosity between Mingrelians (of whom Beria was one) and Abkhazians; during the Second Five-Year Plan (1933–37) Beria initiated the settlement of large numbers of Mingrelians, Armenians and Russians into Abkhazia.
It appears that Lakoba, who stood up for the Abkhaz when he could, was extremely popular at home, so Beria did not dare arrest him and his revenge came in subtler form than the typical 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...
. Instead, four years later, Lakoba and his brother were summoned to Party headquarters in Tbilisi and (as best as can be deduced) Nestor was poisoned during dinner with Beria, dying shortly afterwards. His death of a "heart attack" (despite no history of heart trouble for a man in his early forties) was announced in newspapers a few days later. Beria feigned tremendous grief. His body was transported from Tbilisi to Sukhumi
Sukhumi
Sukhumi is the capital of Abkhazia, a disputed region on the Black Sea coast. The city suffered heavily during the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict in the early 1990s.-Naming:...
with great ceremony, and Lakoba was given an elaborate state funeral which thousands of Abkhazians attended. According to Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's memoirs, Beria had Lakoba's body exhumed and burned on the pretext that an "enemy of the people" did not deserve burial in Abkhazia; this was possibly done to hide evidence of poisoning. Others say that after his denunciation his coffin and remains were dug up and reinterred in an unmarked grave elsewhere.
Lakoba features as a character in Fazil Iskander
Fazil Iskander
Fazil Abdulovich Iskander is arguably the most famous Abkhaz writer, renowned in the former Soviet Union for his vivid descriptions of Caucasian life, mostly written in Russian...
's novel Sandro of Chegem, and in the 1989 Soviet film Balthazar's Feasts inspired by it.
Aftermath of Nestor's death
Lakoba was declared an "enemy of the peopleEnemy of the people
The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation of political or class opponents of the group using the term. The term implies that the "enemies" in question are acting against society as a whole. It is similar to the notion of "enemy of the state". The term originated in Roman times as ,...
" and denounced for Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
and national deviationism several months after his death, accused of having fomented an insurrection and having organized a counter-revolutionary plot to kill Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....
and Joseph 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...
himself. In October 1937, his brother Mikhail was convicted in 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 participating in the conspiracy and shot.
While the charges against Lakoba were entirely false, Beria, a master provocateur, had in fact staged an incident that led Stalin to grant his approval for Lakoba's liquidation. Beria and Stalin were on a boat ride on the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
, and Beria had hired some hoodlums in the mountains to shoot toward them. They did as they were told, deliberately missing their target, and were promptly killed when they came to collect their reward. This gave Beria a pretext to take revenge on Lakoba. The charge of an anti-Stalin plot on his part was especially far-fetched, given that Lakoba in 1934 had written a hagiographic
Hagiography
Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...
pamphlet, Stalin and Khashim, in which he praised him as "the greatest man of a whole epoch, such as history gives to humanity only once in one or two hundred years".
Lakoba left a young and beautiful widow, rumored to be a Georgian
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
princess. She was arrested soon after his death and imprisoned in Tbilisi
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
. The NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
took away this calm, silent woman every evening, beat her severely in order to have her sign a statement on "How Lakoba sold Abkhazia
Abkhazia
Abkhazia is a disputed political entity on the eastern coast of the Black Sea and the south-western flank of the Caucasus.Abkhazia considers itself an independent state, called the Republic of Abkhazia or Apsny...
to Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
", and dragged her back to her cell, bloody and unconscious, in the morning. Her reply each time was "I will not defame the memory of my husband", so their son Rauf, aged 14, was arrested, brought to the jail where his mother was held, threatened with death if she did not testify, and beaten in front of her. His wife's repeated refusal to confess angered the NKVD agents and she finally died in her cell after a night of torture.
Rauf Lakoba was sent to a labor camp
Labor camp
A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
for children whose parents had been convicted of political crime
Political crime
In criminology, a political crime is an offence involving overt acts or omissions , which prejudice the interests of the state, its government or the political system...
s. He and two friends there wrote to Beria asking to be sent home and continue with school. Beria summoned them and had them taken to the courtyard of an NKVD jail in Tbilisi, where they were shot, having been accused of taking part in a "counterrevolutionary
Counterrevolutionary
A counter-revolutionary is anyone who opposes a revolution, particularly those who act after a revolution to try to overturn or reverse it, in full or in part...
group" engaged in "systematic agitation aimed at discrediting measures taken by the party and government".
External links
- "Chapter One: The Abkhazian Candidate", Degenerate Magazine.
- "Behind the Kremlin Walls", Leon Trotsky, New InternationalNew InternationalNew International is a magazine of Marxist theory published by the Socialist Workers Party of the United States between 1934 and 1940, and since 1983.The magazine was founded and edited by Martin Abern and Max Shachtman...
, v. 5, March 1939, pp. 70–74. Biography, with photographs