Christian Rakovsky
Encyclopedia
Christian Rakovsky was a Bulgaria
n socialist revolutionary
, a Bolshevik
politician and Soviet
diplomat; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist. Rakovsky's political career took him throughout the Balkans
and into France and Imperial Russia; for part of his life, he was also a Romania
n citizen.
A lifelong collaborator of Leon Trotsky
, he was a prominent activist of the Second International
, involved in politics with the Bulgarian Social Democratic Union, Romanian Social Democratic Party
, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
. Rakovsky was expelled at different times from various countries as a result of his activities, and, during World War I, became a founding member of the Revolutionary Balkan Social Democratic Labor Federation
while helping to organize the Zimmerwald Conference
. Imprisoned by Romanian authorities, he made his way to Russia, where he joined the Bolshevik Party
after the October Revolution
, and, as head of the Rumcherod
, unsuccessfully attempted to generate a communist revolution
in the Kingdom of Romania
. Subsequently, he was a founding member of the Comintern
, served as head of government
in the Ukrainian SSR
, and took part in negotiations at the Genoa Conference
.
He came to oppose Joseph Stalin
and rallied with the Left Opposition
, being marginalized inside the government and sent as Soviet ambassador to London and Paris, where he was involved in renegotiating financial settlements. He was ultimately recalled from France in autumn 1927, after signing his name to a controversial Trotskyist
platform which endorsed world revolution
. Credited with having developed the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism
as "bureaucratic centrism", Rakovsky was subject to internal exile. Submitting to Stalin's leadership in 1934 and being briefly reinstated, he was nonetheless implicated in the Trial of the Twenty One
(part of the Moscow Trials
), imprisoned, and executed by the NKVD
during World War II. He was rehabilitated
in 1988, during the Soviet Glasnost
period.
name was Krastyo Georgiev Stanchev (Кръстьо Георгиев Станчев), which he himself changed to Krastyo Rakovski (Кръстьо Раковски). The usual form his first name took in Romanian
was Cristian (occasionally rendered as Christian), while his last name was spelled Racovski, Racovschi, or Rakovski. His given name was occasionally rendered as Ristache, an antiquated hypocoristic
—he was known as such to his acquaintance, the writer Ion Luca Caragiale
.
In Russian, his full name, including patronymic
, was Khristian Georgievich Rakovsky (Xристиан Георгиевич Раковский). Christian (as well as Cristian and Kristian) is an approximate rendition of Krastyo (the Bulgarian for "cross"), as used by Rakovsky himself. In Ukrainian
, Rakovsky's name is rendered as Християн Георгійович Раковський, and usually transliterated
as Khrystyyan Georgiiovych Rakovsky.
During his lifetime, he was also known under the pseudonyms H. Insarov and Grigoriev, which he used in signing several articles for the Russian-language press.
—near Kotel—at the time still part of Ottoman
-ruled Rumelia
. He was, on his mother's side, the nephew of Georgi Sava Rakovski
, a revolutionary hero of the Bulgarian National Revival
; that side of his family also included Georgi Mamarchev, who had fought against the Ottomans in the Imperial Russian Army
. Rakovsky's father was a merchant who belonged to the Democratic Party
.
He later stated that, as early as his childhood years, he had felt a special admiration towards Russia, and that he had been impressed by witnessing, at age 5, the Russo-Turkish War and Russian presence (he claimed to have met General Eduard Totleben
during the conflict). Although his parents moved to the Kingdom of Romania
in 1880, settling in Gherengic
(Northern Dobruja
), he completed his education in newly-emancipated Bulgaria. Rakovsky was expelled from the gymnasium
in Gabrovo
for his political activities (in 1887 and then again, after organizing a riot, in 1890). It was around that time that he became a Marxist
, and began collaborating with the socialist journalist Evtim Dabev, whom he aided in printing works by Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels
(at the time, Rakovsky and Sava Balabanov also published their own newspaper, the clandestine Zerkalo).
Since, after having ultimately been banned from attending any public school in the country, he could not complete his education in Bulgaria, in September 1890 Rakovsky went to Geneva
to begin his studies and become a physician. While in Switzerland
, he joined the Socialist Student Circle at the University of Geneva
, which was largely composed of non-Swiss youth.
A polyglot, Rakovsky became close to Georgy Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, and his circle, eventually writing a number of articles and a book in Russian. He also briefly worked with Rosa Luxembourg, Pavel Axelrod
and Vera Zasulich
. Unable to attend the First International Congress of Socialist Students in Brussels
(1892), he became involved in organizing the Second Congress, held in Geneva during the fall of 1893.
He was a founding editor of the Geneva-based Bulgarian-language magazine Sotsial-Demokrat and later a major contributor to the Bulgarian Marxist publications Den, Rabotnik, and Drugar. At the time, Rakovsky and Balabanov, with Plekhanov's encouragement, stressed the importance for moderation in socialist policies—Sotsial-Demokrat rallied with the Bulgarian Social Democratic Union and rejected the more radical Social-Democratic Party of Bulgaria. He soon became involved in distributing socialist propaganda inside Bulgaria, at a time when Stefan Stambolov
organized a crackdown on political opposition.
Later in 1893, Rakovsky enrolled in a medical school in Berlin, contributing articles for Vorwärts
and becoming close to Wilhelm Liebknecht
(the two corresponded regularly for the rest of Liebknecht's life). As a Bulgarian delegate to the Second International
Congress in Zürich
, he also met with Engels and Jules Guesde
.
Six months later, he was arrested and expelled from the German Empire
for maintaining close contacts with the Russian revolutionaries there. He finished his education in 1894–1896 in Zürich
, Nancy and Montpellier
, where he wrote for La Jeunesse Socialiste and La Petite République, maintaining a friendship with Guesde and becoming an opponent of Jean Jaurès
' reformist
views. According to his own testimony, he became active in supporting the Anti-Ottoman upsurge
in Crete
and Macedonia
, as well as Dashnak
revolutionary activities. In 1896, he was the Bulgarian representative to the Second International's London Congress (part of his speech was published in Karl Kautsky
's Die Neue Zeit
).
In 1897 he published Russiya na Istok (Russia in the East), a book sharply critical of the Russian Empire
's foreign policy, which, according to Rakovsky, followed one of Georgy Plekhanov's guidelines ("Tsarist Russia must be isolated in its foreign relations"). On several occasions, he publicly criticized Russia's policies towards Romania and in Bessarabia
(describing Russia's rule over the latter as "absolutist
conquest", "mischievous action", and "abduction"). According to Rakovsky, "Russophile
papers" in Bulgaria had begun to target him as a consequence.
After completing his education as a physician at the University of Montpellier
(with the thesis L'Éthiologie du crime et de la dégénérescence – "The Cause of Crime and Degeneration", submitted in 1897), Rakovsky, who had married the Russian student E. P. Ryabova, was summoned to Romania in order to be drafted in the Romanian Army, and served as a medic
in the 9th Cavalry Regiment stationed in Constanţa
, Dobruja
(1899–1900). He rose to the rank of lieutenant.
Rakovsky subsequently rejoined his wife in Saint Petersburg
, where he hoped to settle down and engage in revolutionary activities (he was probably expelled after an initial attempt to enter the country, but was allowed to return). An adversary of Peter Berngardovich Struve
after the latter moved towards market liberalism
, he became acquainted with, among others, Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky
, while authoring articles for Nashe Slovo and helping distribute Iskra
. His close relationship with Plekhanov led Rakovsky to a position between the Menshevik
and Bolshevik
factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, one he kept from 1903 to 1917; the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin
was initially hostile to Rakovsky, and at one point wrote to Karl Radek
that "we [the Bolsheviks] do not have the same road as his kind of people".
Initially, Rakovsky was expelled from Russia and had to move back to Paris. Returning to the Russian capital in 1900, he remained there until 1902, when his wife's death and the crackdown on socialist groups ordered by Emperor Nicholas II
forced him to return to France. Working for a while as a physician in the village of Beaulieu
, Haute-Loire, he asked French officials to review his case for naturalization
, but was refused.
In 1903, following the death of his father, Rakovsky again lived in Paris, where he followed developments of the Russo-Japanese War
and spoke out against Russia, attracting, according to Rakovsky himself, the criticism of both Plekhanov and Jules Guesde
. He voiced his opposition to the concession made by Karl Kautsky
to Jean Jaurès
, one which had allowed socialists to join "bourgeois
" governments in times of crisis.
He ultimately settled in Romania (1904) having inherited his father's estate near Mangalia
. In 1913, his property, valued at some 40,000 United States dollars at the time, was home to Leon Trotsky
—when the latter visited the Balkans as a press envoy in the Balkan Wars
. He was usually present in Bucharest
on a weekly basis, and started an intense activity as a journalist, doctor and lawyer. The Balkans correspondent for L'Humanité
, he was also personally responsible for reviving România Muncitoare
, the defunct journal of the Romanian socialist group, provoking successful strike actions which brought him to the attention of officials.
Christian Rakovsky also traveled to Bulgaria, where he eventually sided with the Tesnyatsi
in their conflict with other socialist groups. In 1904, he was present at the Second International
's Congress in Amsterdam
, where he gave a speech celebrating the assassination of Russian police chief Vyacheslav von Plehve
by Socialist-Revolutionary Party
members.
Rakovsky became noted locally especially after 1905, when he organized rallies in support of the Battleship Potemkin revolt
(the events worsened relations between Russia and the Romanian Kingdom
), carried out a relief operation for the Potemkin crew as their ship sought refuge in Constanţa
, and attempted to determine them to set sail for Batumi
and aid striking workers there. According to his own account, a parallel scandal occurred when an armed Bolshevik ship was captured in Romanian territorial waters; Rakovsky, who indicated that the weapons on board were to be used in Batumi, faced allegations in the Romanian press that he was preparing a Dobruja
n insurrection.
His head was injured during street clashes with police forces
over the Potemkin issue; while recovering, Rakovsky befriended the Romanian poets Ştefan Octavian Iosif
and Dimitrie Anghel
, who were publishing works under a common signature—one of the two authored a sympathetic portrait of the socialist leader, based on his recollections from the early 1900s. Throughout these years, Rakovsky, was, according to Iosif and Anghel, "continuously bustling; disappearing and appearing in workers' centers, be it in Brăila
, be it in Galaţi
, be it in Iaşi
, be it anywhere, always preaching with the same undaunted fervor and fanatical conviction his social credo".
Rakovsky was drawn into a polemic with the Romanian authorities, facing public accusations that, as a Bulgarian, he lacked patriotism; in return, he commented that, if patriotism meant "race prejudice
, international and civil war, political tyranny and plutocratic
domination", he refused to be identified with it. Upon the outbreak of Romanian Peasants' Revolt
of 1907, Rakovsky was especially vocal: he launched accusations at the National Liberal
government, arguing that, having profited from the early antisemitic message of the revolt, it had violently repressed it from the moment peasants began to attack landowners. Supportive of the thesis according to which the peasantry had revolutionary importance inside Romanian society and Eastern Europe at large, Rakovsky publicized his perspective in the socialist press (writing articles on the subject for România Muncitoare, L'Humanité, Avanti!
, Vorwärts
and others). Rakovsky was also one of the journalists suspected of having greatly exaggerated the overall death toll in their accounts: his estimates speak of over 10,000 peasants killed, whereas the government data counted only 421.
He became close to the influential dramatist Ion Luca Caragiale
, who was living in Berlin at the time. Caragiale authored his own virulent critique of the Romanian state and its handling of the revolt, an essay titled 1907, din primăvară până în toamnă ("1907, From Spring to Autumn"), which, in its final version, adopted some of Rakovsky's suggestions.
(at the Seventh Congress of the Second International
). He decided not to recognize it, and contended that his father had settled in Northern Dobruja
before the Treaty of Berlin that had awarded the region to Romania; the plea was rejected by the Court of Appeal, based on evidence that Rakovsky's father was not in Dobruja before 1880, and that Rakovsky himself used a Bulgarian passport when moving across borders. During the 1920s, Rakovsky was still viewing the incident as a "blatantly illegal act".
The action itself caused protests from leftist politicians and sympathizers, including, among others, the influential Marxist thinker Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
(whose appeal in favor of Rakovsky was described by Iosif and Anghel as evidence of "an almost parental love"). The local socialists organized several rallies in his support, and the return of his citizenship was also backed by Take Ionescu
's opposition group, the Conservative-Democratic Party. In exile, Rakovsky authored the pamphlet Les persécutions politiques en Roumanie ("Political Persecutions in Romania") and two books (La Roumanie des boyars – "Boyar
Romania", and the since-lost From the Kingdom of Arbitrariness and Cowardice).
Eventually, he traveled back into Romania in October 1909, only to be arrested upon his transit through Brăila County
. According to his recollections, he was for long left stranded on the border with Austria-Hungary
, as officials in the latter country refused to let him pass; the situation had to be settled by negotiations between the two countries. Also according to Rakovsky, the arrest was hidden by the Ion I. C. Brătianu
cabinet until it leaked to the press—this, coupled with rumors that he was about to be killed, and Brătianu's statement that he would "rather destroy [Rakovsky] than let [him] back into Rumania", caused a series of important street clashes between his supporters and government forces. On December 9, 1909, a Romanian Railways
employee named Stoenescu attempted to assassinate Brătianu. The event, which was attributed by Rakovsky to support for his return and by other sources to government manipulation, caused a clampdown on România Muncitoare
(among those socialists arrested and interrogated were Gheorghe Cristescu
, I. C. Frimu
, and Dumitru Marinescu).
Rakovsky secretly returned to Romania in 1911, giving himself up in Bucharest
. According to Rakovsky, he was again expelled, holding a Romanian passport, to Istanbul
, where he was swiftly arrested by the Young Turks
government but released soon after. He subsequently left for Sofia
, where he established the Bulgarian socialist journal Napred
. Ultimately, the new Petre P. Carp
Conservative
cabinet agreed to allow his return to Romania, following pressures from the French Premier
Georges Clemenceau
(who answered an appeal by Jean Jaurès
). According to Rakovsky, this was also determined by the Conservative change in policies towards the peasantry. He unsuccessfully ran for Parliament
during the elections of that year (and several others in succession), being fully reinstated as a citizen in April 1912. Romanian historian Stelian Tănase
contends that the expulsion had instilled resentment in Rakovsky; earlier, the leading National Liberal politician Ion G. Duca
himself had argued that Rakovsky was developing a "hatred for Romania".
Alongside Mihai Gheorghiu Bujor and Frimu, Rakovsky was one of the founders of the Romanian Social Democratic Party
(PSDR), serving as its president. In May 1912, he helped organize a mourning session for the centennial of Russian rule in Bessarabia, and authored numerous new articles on the matter. He was afterwards involved in calling for peace during the Balkan Wars
; notably, Rakovsky expressed criticism of Romania's invasion of Bulgaria during the Second Balkan War
, and called on Romanian authorities not to annex Southern Dobruja
. Alongside Frimu, Bujor, Ecaterina Arbore
and others, he lectured at the PSDR's propaganda school during the short period the latter was in existence (in 1910 and again in 1912–1913).
In 1913, Rakovsky was married a second time, to Alexandrina Alexandrescu (also known as Ileana Pralea), a socialist militant and intellectual, who taught mathematics in Ploieşti
. Alexandrescu was herself a friend of Dobrogeanu-Gherea and an acquaintance of Caragiale. She had previously been married to Filip Codreanu, a Narodnik
activist born in Bessarabia, with whom she had a daughter, Elena, and a son, Radu.
Rallying with the left wing of international social democracy
during the early stages of World War I, Rakovsky later indicated that he had been purposely informed of the controversial pro-war stance taken by the Social Democratic Party of Germany
by the pro-Entente
Romanian Foreign Minister Emanuel Porumbaru
. With staff of the Menshevik paper Nashe Slovo (edited by Leon Trotsky
), he was among the most prominent socialist pacifists
of the period. Reflecting his ideological priorities, România Muncitoare
s title was changed into Jos Răsboiul! ("Down with war!")—it was later to be known as Lupta Zilnică (the "Daily combat").
Heavily critical of the French Socialist Party's decision to join the René Viviani
cabinet (deeming it "an abdication"), he stressed the responsibility of all European countries in provoking the war, and adhered to Trotsky's vision of a "Peace without indemnities or annexations" as an alternative to "imperialist
war". According to Rakovsky, tensions between the French SFIO
and the German Social Democrats were reflecting not just context, but major ideological differences.
Present in Italy
in March 1915, he attended the Milan
Congress of the Italian Socialist Party
, during which he attempted to persuade it to condemn irredentist goals
. In July, after convening the Bucharest Conference, he and Vasil Kolarov
established the Revolutionary Balkan Social Democratic Labor Federation
(comprising the left-leaning socialist parties of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia
and Greece
), and Rakovsky was elected first secretary of its Central Bureau.
Subsequently, together with the Italian Socialist delegates (Oddino Morgari
, Giacinto Menotti Serrati
, and Angelica Balabanoff
among them), Rakovsky was instrumental in convening the anti-war international socialist Zimmerwald Conference
in September 1915. During the congress, he came into open conflict with Lenin, after the latter voiced the Zimmerwald Left
's opposition to the resolution (at one point, Rakovsky reportedly lost his temper and grabbed Lenin, causing him to temporarily leave the hall in protest). Later, he continued to mediate between Lenin and the Second International, a situation from which emerged a circular letter that complemented the Zimmerwald Manifesto while being more radical in tone. In October 1915, he reportedly did not protest Bulgaria's entry into the war
—this information was contradicted by Trotsky, who also indicated that the Tesniatsy
had been the target of a government crackdown at that exact moment.
Rakovsky ran for Parliament for a final time during 1916, and again lost when contesting a seat in Covurlui County. Again arrested in 1916, after being accused of planning rebellion during a violent incident in Galaţi
, he was, according to his own account, freed by a general strike
which constituted "an outburst of indignation among the workers". Evaluating the situation in Romania, he identified the two main pro-Entente political forces of the moment, the groups led by Take Ionescu
and Nicolae Filipescu, with, respectively, "corruption" and "reaction
".
Suspicions also rose that he had been contacted by German intelligence, that his 1915 trip to Italy had served German interests, and that he was being subsidized with German money. Rakovsky also drew attention to himself after welcoming to Bucharest
the pro-German maverick socialist Alexander Parvus
. His independence was consequently challenged by the interventionist
paper Adevărul
, a former socialist venue, who called Rakovsky "an adventurer without scruples", and viewed him as employed by Parvus and other German socialists. Rakovsky himself alleged that, "under the mask of independence", Adevărul and its editor Constantin Mille
were in the pay of Take Ionescu. After Romania's entry into the conflict on the side of the Entente in August 1916, having failed to attend the Kienthal Conference
due to the closure of borders, he was placed under surveillance and ultimately imprisoned in September, based on the belief that he was acting as a German spy
. As Bucharest fell to the Central Powers
during the 1916 campaign
, he was taken by Romanian authorities to their refuge in Iaşi. Held until after the February Revolution
, he was freed by the Russian Army on May 1, 1917, and immediately left for Odessa
.
Rakovsky moved to Petrograd
(the new name of Saint Petersburg) in the spring of 1917. His anti-war activism almost got him arrested; Rakovsky managed to flee in August, and was present in Stockholm
for the Third Zimmerwald Conference
; he remained there and, with Karl Radek
, issued propaganda material in support of the Russian revolutionaries. Present in the internationalist
faction of the Mensheviks, he joined the Bolshevik
s in December 1917 or early 1918, after the October Revolution
(although he was occasionally listed among the Old Bolsheviks). Rakovsky later stated that he had friendly relations with the Bolsheviks from early autumn 1917, when, during the attempted putsch
of Lavr Kornilov
, he was hidden by these in Sestroretsk
.
His rise in influence and his approval of world revolution
led him to seek Lenin's support for a Bolshevik government over Romania, at a time when a similar attempt was being made by the Odessa-based Romanian Social Democratic Action Committee, under the guidance of Mihai Gheorghiu Bujor; during the period, a group of one hundred Russian Bolsheviks had infiltrated Iaşi
with the goal of assassinating King
Ferdinand I
and organizing a coup. Eventually, Lenin decided in favor of a unified project, and called on Bujor and Rakovsky to form a single leadership (which also included the Romanian expatriates Alecu Constantinescu
and Ion Dic Dicescu
).
As the coup was under preparation in December 1917, Rakovsky was present on the border and waiting a signal to enter the country. When Bolsheviks were arrested and the move was overturned, he was probably responsible for ordering the arrest of Romania's representative to Petrograd, Constantin I. Diamandy, and his entire staff (all of whom were used as hostage
s, pending the release of prisoners taken in Iaşi). Trotsky, who was by then Russia's People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs
(Foreign Minister
), called on the Romanian government of Ion I. C. Brătianu
to hand in persons captured, indicating that he would otherwise encourage the communist activities of Romanian refugees on Russian soil, and receiving a reply according to which no such arrests had occurred.
At the same time, Rakovsky regained Odessa, where he became a leader of the Bolshevik administrative body (Rumcherod
), ordered violent reprisals to be aimed at Romanian nationals present in the city, and issued agitprop
literature in Romanian
.
As Russia negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
with Germany, he ordered Rumcherod troops to march towards Romania, which was by then giving in to the German advances and preparing to sign its own peace. Initially stalled by a much-criticized temporary armistice
with Romanian Army leader Alexandru Averescu
, Rakovsky ordered a fresh offensive in Moldavia
, but had to retreat when the Central Powers
, confronted with Trotsky's refusal to accept their version of a Russo-German peace, began their own military operation and occupied Odessa (setting free Romanians who had been imprisoned there). On March 9, 1918, Rakovsky signed a treaty with Romania regarding the evacuation of Russian troops from Bessarabia, which allowed for the Moldavian Democratic Republic
to join Romania. In May, Romania conceded to the demands of the Central Powers (see Treaty of Bucharest, 1918
).
In April–May 1918, he negotiated with the Ukrainian People's Republic
Tsentral'na Rada, then with the Hetmanate
of Pavlo Skoropadsky
, as well as with German forces (see Ukraine after the Russian Revolution
). Soon after, Rakovsky left for Austria
(where the First Republic
had been proclaimed), being received by Foreign Minister
Victor Adler
(a member of Karl Renner
's Social Democratic Party of Austria
cabinet). Rakovsky's real goal was to reach Germany and negotiate the situation in Ukraine, but he was expelled upon arrival to that country.
Escorted, together with Adolph Joffe
and Nikolai Bukharin
, to the German-aligned Belarusian National Republic
, he caught news of the collapse of the German Empire
and was selected as a delegate to the German workers' council
s. He and all other envoys were arrested by German soldiers in Kaunas
, and sent to Minsk
, then to Homyel
, before making their way to Moscow.
, Lenin appointed Rakovsky as the Chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Workers and Peasants of Ukraine, replacing Georgy Pyatakov
on January 16, 1919 due to the latter's argument with Fyodor Sergeyev
fpr excessive interference in Ukrainian affairs. On March 29, 1919 the government was reorganized as the Soviet of the People's Commissars
. According to the British author Arthur Ransome
, present in Moscow during early that year, "It had been found that the views of the Pyatakov government were further left than those of its supporters, and so Pyatakov had given way to Rakovsky who was better able to conduct a more moderate policy". While in office, Rakovsky totally ignored Ukrainian issues, considering Ukraine and its language merely "an invention" of intellectuals.
At the time, Rakovsky assessed the situation created by the Treaty of Versailles
, and advised his superiors to build warm relations with both Mustafa Kemal
's Turkey
and the Weimar Republic
, as a camp of countries dissatisfied with policies of the Allied Powers
. Reviewing his previous stance on Bessarabia, Rakovsky eventually subscribed to the Bolshevik condemnation of Greater Romania
. During the Paris Peace Conference
, the Romanian delegation attributed the shortage in supply in Bessarabia and Transylvania
a Bolshevik conspiracy
centered on Rakovsky; various French reports of the time gave contradictory assessments (while some credited Rakovsky with direct influence on Soviet foreign policy, others dismissed the notion that Russia had any such projects).
Rakovsky simultaneously served as Soviet Ukraine's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and a member of the South West Front's Revolutionary Military Council
, contributing to the defeat of the White Army
and Ukrainian nationalists during the Russian Civil War
, while theorizing that "Ukraine was a laboratory of internationalism
" and "a decisive factor in world revolution". Rakovsky's presence was also decisive in rallying the dissident Borotbists
to the Bolshevik faction's central bodies—he was subsequently confronted with a degree of Borotbist opposition inside his government. According to American politologist Jerry F. Hough
, his appointment and policies were evidence of Russification
, a program requested by Lenin himself; Rakovsky's view contrasted with that supported by Stalin, who, at the time, was calling for increased Ukrainianization.
In March 1919, Christian Rakovsky was one of the founding members of the Comintern
, where he represented the Balkan Communist Federation
. During those months, when control over the entire Ukraine was made possible by the offensive against Directorate
forces, he expressed his support for the Yekaterinoslav
wing of the Ukrainian Communist Party—following its wishes, he subordinated the Ukrainian Communists to the Russian Communist Party
and argued that a separate Central Committee
was "luxury" for such a small grouping.
In summer, as Rakovsky's government briefly lost control of Ukraine, his policies became hotly contested by partisans of Ukrainian autonomy inside the Party, who held a conference in Homyel (one which Rakovsky did not attend). At the Fourth Congress of the Ukrainian Party (March 1920), the leadership of Rakovsky, Stanislav Kosior
, and Dmitry Manuilsky
was not reelected. Attacks on them caused problems with the Russian Party; as Lenin himself sided with Rakovsky, a delegation comprising Trotsky, Lev Kamenev
and Adolph Joffe
left for Kiev
to discuss the matter with local leaders. In order to curb the crisis, the Ukrainian Party was subjected to a major purge, during which pro-autonomy opposition was removed from its ranks and the former leaders were reinstated.
At the time, Rakovsky and Georgy Chicherin
received harsh criticism from the Hungarian
communist leaders Béla Kun
, for allegedly refusing aid to the Hungarian Soviet Republic
and thus contributing to its fall. This appears not to have been true, as Rakovsky reportedly urged Lenin to finance the Kun even as the latter faced the intervention of troops from both Romania and Czechoslovakia
. Lenin wrote back to Kun informing him that the Central Committee
was satisfied with the way in which Rakovsky and Chicherin had carried out their mission.
After dealing with the common offensive of the Directorate and Polish
forces—the Kiev Offensive (see Polish-Soviet War in 1920
)—, Rakovsky's government took measures regarding collectivization; according to his biographer Gus Fagan, he became himself a proponent of greater Ukrainian autonomy, and advocated both Ukrainization through the complete integration of Borotbists
into Party structures and a slower pace in communization. He notably came into conflict with the Russian Party after his second executive had its independent Commissariat of Foreign Trade replaced with an office under the control of central authorities. He continued to pressure for a measure of independence in Ukrainian economy, and, during the early 1920s, the republic sealed its own trade agreements with other European countries.
Rakovsky remained a Romanian citizen for the entire period. In 1921, he was officially summoned to be tried by a court-martial
for "crime against the security of the Romanian state". He was sentenced to death
in absentia
(1924), a move which may have been prompted by the similar verdict given by a Soviet Court to Ion Inculeţ
(who had led the Moldavian Democratic Republic
's Legislative Assembly
that voted union with Romania). As the Socialist Party of Romania
delegation (Gheorghe Cristescu
, Eugen Rozvan
, David Fabian, Constantin Popovici, Ioan Flueraş
, and Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea
) voted to adhere to the Comintern, Rakovsky and Grigory Zinoviev
pressured the group to expel those of its members who supported Greater Romania (including Flueraş and Popovici, as well as Iosif Jumanca and Leon Ghelerter).
In February 1922, he was sent to Berlin in order to negotiate with German officials, and, in March, was part of the official delegation to the Genoa Conference
—under the leadership of Georgy Chicherin
. Rakovsky himself was virulently opposed to any stalemate with the Allies
, and urged his delegation not to abandon policies over promises of deescalation and trade. A leader of the delegation's commissions on economic aid, loans and government debt
, he was also charged with renewing contacts with Germany—together with Adolph Joffe
, he discussed the matter with the pro-Soviet Ago von Maltzan, and, as Russia failed to reach an agreement with the Allies, managed to obtain from Germany promises of cooperation (see Treaty of Rapallo, 1922
). Two years later, when captured by the Bolsheviks, Eser
conspirator Boris Savinkov
allegedly confessed that he intended to have both Rakovsky and Chicherin killed in Berlin, as they returned from Genoa
. In November 1922, Rakovsky attended the Conference of Lausanne
, where he was confronted with the assassination of his fellow diplomat Vaslav Vorovsky
by the émigré
Maurice Conradi.
As the Soviet Union
was being created, Rakovsky became opposed to the new central leadership over the issue of self-determination
for the Soviet republics
and autonomous republics
. This followed the dispute between, on one side, Joseph Stalin
, Zinoviev, Totsky and Kamenev, and, on the other, the leadership of the Georgian SSR (see Georgian Affair
). At the time, he evidenced a "permanent struggle which the so-called independent and autonomous republics had to carry out to safeguard not only their prerogatives but their very own existence". Arguing in favor of extending the revolution from Ukraine to the Balkans
, and indicating his belief that the peasantry was being alienated by internationalist
messages, Rakovsky cited concerns that centralism
was placing Soviet influence in peril, and called for "carrying out a correct theoretical and practical solution to the national question within the boundaries of the Soviet Union". In November 1922, he successfully proposed the formation of a Soviet of Nationalities
to double the Soviet of the Union
inside the supreme legislative body; his arguments in favor of reducing the number of representatives of Russian SFSR and barring the total number of envoys from any republic at one fifth of the total were dismissed after being criticized by Stalin.
After Lenin's illness and incapacitation, Rakovsky joined Leon Trotsky's Left Opposition
and came into conflict with Stalin. Although declining, his influence in Ukraine was, according to political scientist John P. Willerton, one of Trotsky's main bases of support, alongside sections of the Red Army
, a group of Komsomol
leaders, and various officials involved in economic planning
. In early July 1923, after being isolated inside the Ukrainian leadership, he was removed from his Ukrainian post, replaced with Vlas Chubar
, and sent to London to negotiate a formal recognition of the Soviet regime by the British and French governments. Chubar, an ethnic Ukrainian
, came to represent Stalin's view on nationality issues in the region, officially defined as "nativization". In London, Rakovsky and his wife were joined by Elena Codreanu, whom they had adopted.
In 1924, as the Labour Party
minority cabinet came to power, Ramsay MacDonald
and Rakovsky negotiated de jure
recognition and agreed on possible future Anglo-Soviet treaty and a British loan for the Soviet Union. Negotiations were tested by the so-called Bankers' Memorandum, published by The Times
, which demanded that the Soviet Union abandon nationalization
s and return to private property
. Eventually, two treaties were signed, allowing for commerce to be normalized between the two countries, and reflecting Rakovsky's views that private complaints of creditors against the Soviet state were to be settled outside the conference. The scandal which erupted when the Zinoviev Letter
was publicized, rekindling suspicions against the Soviet government and provoking the fall of MacDonald's cabinet, brought an end to all further talks; during and after the incident, Rakovsky repeatedly cited evidence that the Letter was a forgery.
In parallel, he had begun negotiations with France's Raymond Poincaré
, who aimed for a "solidarity of foreign creditors" in respect to the Soviet state, and who agreed to recognize the latter on October 28, 1924. One of his last tasks involved placing Soviet orders for machinery, textiles, and other commodities with British manufacturers: worth 75 million US$ on paper, these failed to attract attention after he announced that the Soviet government did not intend to pay in cash. According to the American magazine Time, Rakovsky also played a hand in motivating Stalin's decision to marginalize Comintern leader Zinoviev, by complaining that the latter's foreign policy was needlessly radical.
Rakovsky served as the Soviet ambassador to France between October 1925 and October 1927, replacing Leonid Krasin
. He did not take hold of his office until 50 days after his official appointment, refusing to be received at the Élysée Palace
by French President Gaston Doumergue
for as long as the state authorities would not allow The Internationale
(a revolutionary song which was at the time the Soviet national anthem
) to be played on the occasion. Doumergeue resisted, and, in the end, Rakovsky was received to the sound of an improvised arrangement of bugles
, the more discreet part of which may have been based on The Internationale. Time described it as a "deafening blast".
His first task involved renewed negotiations with the cabinet of Aristide Briand
(February 1926), during which he was confronted with the vocal campaign of creditors. Early results achieved in discussions with Anatole de Monzie
were dismissed by the opposition rallied around Poincaré, and, after being revived by the short-lived cabinet of Édouard Herriot
, talks ended without any result. Poincaré returned to power, and France remained committed to the Locarno Treaties
(which had isolated the Soviet state on the international stage). Over the following year, Christian Rakovsky continued to attempt a détente
with France, advertising Soviet concessions and speaking directly to the public.
During the same period, as tensions grew between Mexico
and the Soviet government over the latter's support for a Mexican railway workers' strike, American agents reported that Rakovsky was instructed to threaten with publicizing correspondence between former President
Álvaro Obregón
and Soviet authorities (which had occurred before diplomatic links were established). Since this could endanger Mexico's relations with the United States, President Plutarco Elías Calles
chose to deescalate the conflict.
Together with his second wife, Rakovsky gave full approval to Max Eastman
's volume Since Lenin Died, which centered on heavy criticism of Soviet realities, and which they reviewed before it was published. He became acquainted with the former French Communist Party
member and anti-Stalinist
journalist Boris Souvarine
, as well as with the Romanian writer Panait Istrati
, who had observed Rakovsky's career ever since his presence in Romania. He also maintained friendly contacts with Marcel Pauker
, a prominent but independent-minded member of the Romanian Communist Party
, whose activities were denounced by the Comintern in 1930.
Rakovsky was eventually declared a persona non grata
in France and recalled after signing the Declaration of the Opposition, a Trotskyist
platform deemed unfriendly by the French government (it stressed support for revolutions and mutinies
in all capitalist countries). According to Time, France's decision was tacitly welcomed by Foreign Affairs Commissar Georgy Chicherin
, due to Rakovsky's political opinions. Rakovsky left without presenting his letter of recall to President Doumergue, although he was scheduled for a meeting at the Élysée. He was initially scheduled to serve as Ambassador to Japan. On his trip back to the Soviet state, he was joined by Istrati, who, partly owing to his witnessing of the Rakovsky's downfall, soon became a noted opponent of Stalinism.
held brief speeches in front of the Soviet Communist Party's Fifteenth Congress. The former was interrupted fifty-seven times by his opponents—Nikolai Bukharin
, Martemyan Ryutin
, and Lazar Kaganovich
. Although, unlike Rakovsky, he used the occasion to appeal for reconciliation, Kamenev was himself interrupted twenty-four times by the same group.
After that moment, although branded "enemy of the people
", Rakovsky was still occasionally allowed to speak in public (notably, together with Kamenev and Karl Radek
, to the Moscow Komsomol
), and continued to criticize Stalin's leadership as "bureaucratic socialism" (see Bureaucratic collectivism
) and "social fascism". With Nikolai Krestinsky
(who split with the group soon afterwards) and Kamenev, he attempted to organize a substantial opposition, visiting Ukraine for this purpose, hosting public meetings and printing manifesto
s addressed to the workers in Kiev
, Kharkiv
, Mykolaiv
, Odessa
, Dnipropetrovsk
, Kherson
, and Zaporizhia
(he was assisted by, among others, Yuri Kotsubinsky). He was persistently heckled
during public appearances, and his supporters were beaten up by the Militsiya
.
In November 1927, after receiving news that Adolph Joffe
had committed suicide, he assigned Ukrainian campaigning to Voja Vujović, and returned to Moscow. Following the defeat of the Left Opposition in November–December 1927, Rakovsky was ousted from the Comintern
, the Central Committee
, and eventually from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
. He was exiled, first to Astrakhan
, Saratov
, and then to Barnaul
. Shortly before the decision, he commented to his visitor, French writer Pierre Naville
: "The French expelled me from Paris for having signed a declaration of the opposition. Stalin expelled me from the [Foreign Affairs Commissariat] for having signed the same declaration. But in both cases they let me keep the jacket".
While in Astrakhan, Rakovsky was employed by the Regional Planning Committee
(Gubplan). He was also active as a writer, starting work on a volume detailing the sources of Utopian socialism
and the thought of Saint-Simon
. Rakovsky remained involved in Trotskyist politics, was contacted by Panait Istrati
and the Greek
writer Nikos Kazantzakis
, and corresponded with Trotsky (who had himself been exiled to Almaty
). Most of his writings were confiscated by the State Political Directorate
, but the letter on Soviet "bureaucratism" he addressed to Nikolai Valentinov
survived, and became notorious as a critique of Stalinism (under the title "Professional Dangers" of Power). Mistrusting Stalin's new leftist policies, he foresaw the renewed moves against the Left Opposition (inaugurated by Trotsky's 1929 expulsion).
As his health deteriorated, he was allowed to move to Saratov upon requests addressed by Krestinsky to Kaganovich, the Secretary of the Central Committee. He was visited by Louis Fischer
, who recorded Rakovsky's determination not to submit to Stalin (contrasting his option with those of Radek, Yevgeni Preobrazhensky
, Alexander Beloborodov and Ivar Smilga
). Instead, Rakovsky incited further resistance to Stalinism, and issued a declaration of the united opposition; following this, he was sent to Barnaul, which he called a "hole in the barren cold ground". In another critical letter to the Party leadership (April 1930), he called for, among other things, the restoration of civil liberties
, a reduction in the party apparatus, the return of Trotsky, and an end to forced collectivization.
Little is known of Rakovsky's life between that moment and July 1932, the moment when he was allowed a medical leave. Towards the end of the same year, Trotsky was informed that he had attempted to flee the Soviet Union, and, in March 1933, it was announced that he had been deported to Yakutia. Answering Trotsky's request, the French mathematician and Trotskyist Jean Van Heijenoort
, together with his fellow activist Pierre Frank
, unsuccessfully called on the influential Soviet author Maxim Gorky
to intervene in favor of Christian Rakovsky, and boarded the ship he was traveling on near Istanbul
. According to Heijenoort, they only managed to meet Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, who reportedly told them that his father was indisposed, but promised to pass on their request. Researcher Tova Yedlin proposed that the problem was caused by Gorky's distress over having recently separated from his mistress Moura Budberg
, as well as to the writer's close surveillance by OGPU
agents.
's rise to power in Germany and under intense pressure from Stalin, he announced his submission to the Party through a telegram he sent Izvestia
(February 23, 1934). While Rakovsky was allowed to return to Moscow, Trotsky declared the dissociation statement to be "purely formal".
Rakovsky formally "admitted his mistakes" in April 1934 (his letter to the Pravda
, titled There Should Be No Mercy, depicted Trotsky and his supporters as "agents of the German Gestapo
"). He was appointed to high office in the Commissariat for Health and allowed to return to Moscow, also serving as Soviet ambassador to Japan in 1935.
Cited in allegations involving the killing of Sergey Kirov
, Rakovsky was arrested in autumn 1937, during the Great Purge
; according to Trotsky, he was forced to wait without food or rest for 18 hours, during which time his house was being searched. He was put on trial in March 1938 with Nikolai Bukharin
, Alexei Rykov
, Genrikh Yagoda
, Nikolai Krestinsky
and other Old Bolsheviks, on charges of conspiring with Trotsky to overthrow Stalin, the third Moscow Show Trial
—known as the Trial of the Twenty One
. In his forced confession
to Andrey Vyshinsky
, he admitted to all the charges—including having been a spy (for Japan) and a landowner. He made attempts to point out that his revenue had been used to support socialism, and that he had a grasp of "revolutionary practices", but was attacked by Vyshinsky, who persistently referred to Rakovsky as "a counterrevolutionary
". In his final statement, Rakovsky argued: "from my young days I honestly, truthfully and devotedly performed my duty as a soldier of the cause of the emancipation of labor. After this bright period a dark period set in, the period of my criminal deeds".
Unlike most of his co-defendants, who were immediately executed, he was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor. After the Nazi
invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa
), Rakovsky was shot on Stalin's orders outside Oryol
—along with Olga Kameneva
, Maria Spiridonova
and over 150 other political prisoners. This execution was one of the many massacres of prisoners
committed by the NKVD
in 1941.
, where she suffered a series of heart attacks
. His adoptive daughter, Elena Codreanu-Racovski, was expelled from her job as secretary of the Mossoviet Theater, and deported to Siberia
. She returned to Moscow in the 1950s, after Stalin's death, and settled in Communist Romania
after 1975, rejoining her brother, the biologist and academic Radu Codreanu. She later authored a memoir which included recollections of her father (it was published in Romanian as De-a lungul şi de-a latul secolului, "The Length and Breadth of the Century"). It was compiled from personal notes and dialogs with physician and former communist militant G. Brătescu, who noted that, probably owing to suspicions she had in respect to the Romanian communist regime, Elena Codreanu refused to talk about Rakovsky's trial and her own persecution. Rakovsky's nephew Boris Stefanov
, whom he encouraged to join the Romanian socialist movement before World War I, later became a general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party
, before being himself purged in 1940.
By 1932, Rakovsky's name was frequently invoked in the heated debate involving Panait Istrati
and his political adversaries. Istrati, having returned to Romania in disillusion over Soviet realities, was initially attacked in the local far right newspapers Curentul and Universul
; writing for the former, Pamfil Şeicaru defined Istrati as "the servant of Racovski". Having published To the Other Flame, in which he exposed Stalinism
, he consequently became the target of intense criticism and allegations from various pro-Soviet writers, led by the Frenchman Henri Barbusse
. During this period, the Romanian communist writer Alexandru Sahia
speculated, among other things, that Istrati had been in the pay of Rakovsky and Trotsky for a sizable part of his life.
Based on his independent opinions and, in part, on his friendship with Rakovsky, Marcel Pauker
was disavowed by the Romanian and Soviet communist parties, and was himself a victim of the Great Purge
in 1938. At various intervals between 1930 and 1952, his wife, the Romanian communist leader Ana Pauker
, faced pressures to denounce her husband. She initially refused to criticize him for anything other than his association with Rakovsky, and never admitted that Marcel Pauker had been guilty of all the charges brought against him.
The influential Hungarian-born author Arthur Koestler
, himself a former communist, based Rubashov, the main character in his 1940 novel Darkness at Noon
, on victims of the Moscow Trials
; according to George Orwell
, Rakovsky's fate was a possible direct influence: "Rubashov might be called Trotsky, Bukharin, Rakovsky or some other relatively civilised figure among the Old Bolsheviks. If one writes about the Moscow trials one must answer the question, «Why did the accused confess?» and which answer one makes is a political decision. Koestler answers, in effect, «Because these people had been rotted by the Revolution which they served», and in doing so he comes near to claiming that revolutions are of their nature bad".
In 1988, during Glasnost
, the Soviet government cleared Rakovsky and his co-defendants of all charges. His rehabilitation
came in February, coinciding with that of Bukharin, as well as with those of Ukrainian official and former People's Commissar for Agriculture Mikhail Alexandrovich Chernov
, former People's Commissar for Foreign Trade Arkady Rozengolts, and other five officials. Bukharin, Rakovsky, Rozengolts, and Chernov were posthumously reinstated to the Communist Party on June 21, 1988. His works were given imprimatur
, while a favorable biography was published by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences
(late 1988).
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
n socialist revolutionary
Professional revolutionaries
The concept of professional revolutionaries, alternatively called cadre, is in origin a Leninist concept used to describe a body of devoted communists who spend the majority of their free time organizing their party toward a mass revolutionary party capable of leading a workers' revolution...
, a 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....
politician and Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
diplomat; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist. Rakovsky's political career took him throughout the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
and into France and Imperial Russia; for part of his life, he was also a Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n citizen.
A lifelong collaborator 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....
, he was a prominent activist 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...
, involved in politics with the Bulgarian Social Democratic Union, Romanian Social Democratic Party
Romanian Social Democratic Party (defunct)
The Romanian Social Democratic Party was a social-democratic political party in Romania. It published the magazine România Muncitoare, and later Socialismul, Lumea Nouă, and Libertatea.-Early party:...
, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party , also known as Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or Russian Social Democratic Party, was a revolutionary socialist Russian political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various revolutionary organizations into one party...
. Rakovsky was expelled at different times from various countries as a result of his activities, and, during World War I, became a founding member of the Revolutionary Balkan Social Democratic Labor Federation
Balkan Communist Federation
The Balkan Federation was a project about the creation of a Balkan federation or confederation, based mainly on left political ideas.The concept of a Balkan federation emerged at the late 19th century from among left political forces in the region...
while helping to organize the 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.-...
. Imprisoned by Romanian authorities, he made his way to Russia, where he joined the Bolshevik Party
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...
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...
, and, as head of the Rumcherod
Rumcherod
Rumcherod was a self-proclaimed, unrecognized, and short-lived organ of Soviet power in the South-Western part of Russian Empire that functioned during May 1917–May 1918...
, unsuccessfully attempted to generate a communist revolution
Communist revolution
A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism, typically with socialism as an intermediate stage...
in the Kingdom of Romania
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania was the Romanian state based on a form of parliamentary monarchy between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania...
. Subsequently, he was a founding member of the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, served as head of government
Prime Minister of Ukraine
The Prime Minister of Ukraine is Ukraine's head of government presiding over the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, which is the highest body of the executive branch of the Ukrainian government....
in the Ukrainian SSR
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
, and took part in negotiations at the Genoa Conference
Genoa Conference
The Genoa Conference was held in Genoa, Italy in 1922 from 10 April to 19 May. At this conference, the representatives of 34 countries convened to speak about monetary economics in the wake of World War I...
.
He came to oppose 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...
and rallied with the Left Opposition
Left Opposition
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January...
, being marginalized inside the government and sent as Soviet ambassador to London and Paris, where he was involved in renegotiating financial settlements. He was ultimately recalled from France in autumn 1927, after signing his name to a controversial Trotskyist
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...
platform which endorsed world revolution
World revolution
World revolution is the Marxist concept of overthrowing capitalism in all countries through the conscious revolutionary action of the organized working class...
. Credited with having developed the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
as "bureaucratic centrism", Rakovsky was subject to internal exile. Submitting to Stalin's leadership in 1934 and being briefly reinstated, he was nonetheless implicated in the Trial of the Twenty One
Trial of the Twenty One
The Trial of the Twenty-One was the last of the Moscow Trials, show trials of prominent Bolsheviks, including the Old Bolsheviks. The Trial of the Twenty-One took place in Moscow in March 1938, towards the end of Stalin's Great Purge.-The Trial:...
(part of the Moscow Trials
Moscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
), imprisoned, and executed by 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....
during World War II. He was 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 1988, during the Soviet 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...
period.
Names
Rakovsky's original BulgarianBulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
name was Krastyo Georgiev Stanchev (Кръстьо Георгиев Станчев), which he himself changed to Krastyo Rakovski (Кръстьо Раковски). The usual form his first name took in Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
was Cristian (occasionally rendered as Christian), while his last name was spelled Racovski, Racovschi, or Rakovski. His given name was occasionally rendered as Ristache, an antiquated hypocoristic
Hypocoristic
A hypocorism is a shorter form of a word or given name, for example, when used in more intimate situations as a nickname or term of endearment.- Derivation :Hypocorisms are often generated as:...
—he was known as such to his acquaintance, the writer Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist...
.
In Russian, his full name, including patronymic
Names in Russian Empire, Soviet Union and CIS countries
The Eastern Slavic naming customs are the traditions for determining a person's name in countries influenced by East Slavic linguistic tradition. This relates to modern Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan...
, was Khristian Georgievich Rakovsky (Xристиан Георгиевич Раковский). Christian (as well as Cristian and Kristian) is an approximate rendition of Krastyo (the Bulgarian for "cross"), as used by Rakovsky himself. In Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
, Rakovsky's name is rendered as Християн Георгійович Раковський, and usually transliterated
Romanization of Ukrainian
The romanization or Latinization of Ukrainian is the representation of the Ukrainian language using Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, a variation of Cyrillic....
as Khrystyyan Georgiiovych Rakovsky.
During his lifetime, he was also known under the pseudonyms H. Insarov and Grigoriev, which he used in signing several articles for the Russian-language press.
Revolutionary beginnings
Christian Rakovsky was born to a wealthy Bulgarian family in GradetsGradets, Sliven Province
Gradets is a village in southeastern Bulgaria, part of Kotel municipality, Sliven Province. It lies at , 680 m above sea level. As of 2005, the mayor is the independent Venko Kavardzhikov, and the population of Gradets is 5,895, which makes it the second most populous village in Bulgaria, after...
—near Kotel—at the time still part of Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
-ruled Rumelia
Rumelia
Rumelia was an historical region comprising the territories of the Ottoman Empire in Europe...
. He was, on his mother's side, the nephew of Georgi Sava Rakovski
Georgi Sava Rakovski
Georgi Stoykov Rakovski , known also Georgi Sava Rakovski , born Sabi Stoykov Popovich , was a 19th-century Bulgarian revolutionary and writer and an important figure of the Bulgarian National Revival and resistance against Ottoman rule.- Early life:Born in Kotel to a wealthy and patriotic...
, a revolutionary hero of the Bulgarian National Revival
Bulgarian National Revival
The Bulgarian National Revival , sometimes called the Bulgarian Renaissance, was a period of socio-economic development and national integration among Bulgarian people under Ottoman rule...
; that side of his family also included Georgi Mamarchev, who had fought against the Ottomans in the Imperial Russian Army
Military history of Imperial Russia
The Military history of the Russian Empire encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great, until the Russian Revolution , which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union...
. Rakovsky's father was a merchant who belonged to the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (Bulgaria)
The Democratic Party is a center-right party in Bulgaria led by Alexander Pramatarski. It is part of the United Democratic Forces. The United Democratic Forces won in the 2001 elections 18.2 % of the popular vote and 51 out of 240 seats...
.
He later stated that, as early as his childhood years, he had felt a special admiration towards Russia, and that he had been impressed by witnessing, at age 5, the Russo-Turkish War and Russian presence (he claimed to have met General Eduard Totleben
Eduard Totleben
Eduard Ivanovich Totleben was a Baltic German military engineer and Imperial Russian Army general. He was in charge of fortification and sapping work during a number of important Russian military campaigns.-Early life:...
during the conflict). Although his parents moved to the Kingdom of Romania
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania was the Romanian state based on a form of parliamentary monarchy between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania...
in 1880, settling in Gherengic
Pecineaga
Pecineaga is a commune in Constanţa County, Romania. The commune includes two villages, Pecineaga and Vânători...
(Northern Dobruja
Northern Dobruja
Northern Dobruja is the part of Dobruja within the borders of Romania. It lies between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, bordered in south by Bulgarian Southern Dobruja.-Geography:...
), he completed his education in newly-emancipated Bulgaria. Rakovsky was expelled from the gymnasium
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 Gabrovo
Gabrovo
Gabrovo is a city in central northern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Gabrovo Province. It is situated at the foot of the central Balkan Mountains, in the valley of the Yantra River, and is known as an international capital of humour and satire , as well as noted for its Bulgarian National...
for his political activities (in 1887 and then again, after organizing a riot, in 1890). It was around that time that he became a Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, and began collaborating with the socialist journalist Evtim Dabev, whom he aided in printing works 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 Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
(at the time, Rakovsky and Sava Balabanov also published their own newspaper, the clandestine Zerkalo).
Since, after having ultimately been banned from attending any public school in the country, he could not complete his education in Bulgaria, in September 1890 Rakovsky went to 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...
to begin his studies and become a physician. While in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, he joined the Socialist Student Circle at the University of Geneva
University of Geneva
The University of Geneva is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland.It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin, as a theological seminary and law school. It remained focused on theology until the 17th century, when it became a center for Enlightenment scholarship. In 1873, it...
, which was largely composed of non-Swiss youth.
A polyglot, Rakovsky became close to Georgy Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, and his circle, eventually writing a number of articles and a book in Russian. He also briefly worked with Rosa Luxembourg, Pavel Axelrod
Pavel Axelrod
Pavel Borisovich Axelrod was a Russian Menshevik.- Early life and career :Born Pinches Borutsch in Potscheff near Chernigov and raised to Shklov, a small provincial town in and Mogilev, the biggest town of the three in the Russian Empire , Axelrod was the son of a Jewish innkeeper.In 1875 in...
and Vera Zasulich
Vera Zasulich
Vera Ivanovna Zasulich was a Russian Marxist writer and revolutionary.-Radical beginnings:Zasulich was born in Mikhaylovka, Russia, one of four daughters of an impoverished minor noble. When she was 3, her father died and her mother sent her to live with her wealthier relatives, the Mikulich...
. Unable to attend the First International Congress of Socialist Students in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
(1892), he became involved in organizing the Second Congress, held in Geneva during the fall of 1893.
He was a founding editor of the Geneva-based Bulgarian-language magazine Sotsial-Demokrat and later a major contributor to the Bulgarian Marxist publications Den, Rabotnik, and Drugar. At the time, Rakovsky and Balabanov, with Plekhanov's encouragement, stressed the importance for moderation in socialist policies—Sotsial-Demokrat rallied with the Bulgarian Social Democratic Union and rejected the more radical Social-Democratic Party of Bulgaria. He soon became involved in distributing socialist propaganda inside Bulgaria, at a time when Stefan Stambolov
Stefan Stambolov
Stefan Nikolov Stambolov was a Bulgarian politician, who served as Prime Minister and regent. He is considered one of the most important and popular "Founders of Modern Bulgaria", and is sometimes referred to as "the Bulgarian Bismarck".- Early years :Stambolov was born in Veliko Tarnovo...
organized a crackdown on political opposition.
Later in 1893, Rakovsky enrolled in a medical school in Berlin, contributing articles for Vorwärts
Vorwärts
Vorwärts was the central organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany published daily in Berlin from 1891 to 1933 by decision of the party's Halle Congress, as the successor of Berliner Volksblatt, founded in 1884....
and becoming close to Wilhelm Liebknecht
Wilhelm Liebknecht
Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht was a German social democrat and a principal founder of the SPD. His political career was a pioneering project combining Marxist revolutionary theory with practical, legal political activity...
(the two corresponded regularly for the rest of Liebknecht's life). As a Bulgarian delegate to 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...
Congress in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, he also met with Engels and Jules Guesde
Jules Guesde
Jules Basile Guesde was a French socialist journalist and politician.Guesde was the inspiration for a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Shortly before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter to Guesde and Paul Lafargue, both of whom already claimed to represent "Marxist" principles...
.
Six months later, he was arrested and expelled from the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
for maintaining close contacts with the Russian revolutionaries there. He finished his education in 1894–1896 in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, Nancy and Montpellier
Montpellier
-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....
, where he wrote for La Jeunesse Socialiste and La Petite République, maintaining a friendship with Guesde and becoming an opponent of Jean Jaurès
Jean Jaurès
Jean Léon Jaurès was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. Both parties merged in 1905 in...
' reformist
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
views. According to his own testimony, he became active in supporting the Anti-Ottoman upsurge
Greco-Turkish War (1897)
The Greco-Turkish War of 1897, also called the Thirty Days' War and known as the Black '97 in Greece, was a war fought between the Kingdom of Greece and Ottoman Empire. Its immediate cause was the question over the status of the Ottoman province of Crete, whose Greek majority long desired union...
in Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
and Macedonia
Macedonia (region)
Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but nowadays the region is considered to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, as...
, as well as Dashnak
Armenian Revolutionary Federation
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation is an Armenian political party founded in Tiflis in 1890 by Christapor Mikaelian, Stepan Zorian, and Simon Zavarian...
revolutionary activities. In 1896, he was the Bulgarian representative to the Second International's London Congress (part of his speech was published in Karl Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-German philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the coming of World War I in 1914 and was called by some the "Pope of...
's Die Neue Zeit
Die Neue Zeit
Die Neue Zeit was a German socialist theoretical journal of the Social Democratic Party of Germany that was published from 1883 to 1923. Founded by leading socialist politicians and theorists, it became the most important organ of the SPD competing with Sozialistische Monatshefte...
).
Military service and first stay in Russia
Although actively involved in many European countries' socialist movements, prior to 1917 Rakovsky's focus remained on the Balkans and especially on his native country and Romania; his activities in support of the international socialist movement led to his expulsion, at different times, from Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, France and Russia.In 1897 he published Russiya na Istok (Russia in the East), a book sharply critical 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...
's foreign policy, which, according to Rakovsky, followed one of Georgy Plekhanov's guidelines ("Tsarist Russia must be isolated in its foreign relations"). On several occasions, he publicly criticized Russia's policies towards Romania and in 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....
(describing Russia's rule over the latter as "absolutist
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...
conquest", "mischievous action", and "abduction"). According to Rakovsky, "Russophile
Russophile
Russophile may refer to:* Russophilia, the love of Russia or Russians* Ukrainian Russophiles, a Ukrainian cultural faction in nineteenth and early twentieth century Galicia who espoused Ruthenian autonomy...
papers" in Bulgaria had begun to target him as a consequence.
After completing his education as a physician at the University of Montpellier
University of Montpellier
The University of Montpellier was a French university in Montpellier in the Languedoc-Roussillon région of the south of France. Its present-day successor universities are the University of Montpellier 1, Montpellier 2 University and Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III.-History:The university...
(with the thesis L'Éthiologie du crime et de la dégénérescence – "The Cause of Crime and Degeneration", submitted in 1897), Rakovsky, who had married the Russian student E. P. Ryabova, was summoned to Romania in order to be drafted in the Romanian Army, and served as a medic
Combat medic
Combat medics are trained military personnel who are responsible for providing first aid and frontline trauma care on the battlefield. They are also responsible for providing continuing medical care in the absence of a readily available physician, including care for disease and battle injury...
in the 9th Cavalry Regiment stationed in Constanţa
Constanta
Constanța is the oldest extant city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast. It is the capital of Constanța County and the largest city in the region....
, Dobruja
Dobruja
Dobruja is a historical region shared by Bulgaria and Romania, located between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, including the Danube Delta, Romanian coast and the northernmost part of the Bulgarian coast...
(1899–1900). He rose to the rank of lieutenant.
Rakovsky subsequently rejoined his wife in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, where he hoped to settle down and engage in revolutionary activities (he was probably expelled after an initial attempt to enter the country, but was allowed to return). An adversary of Peter Berngardovich Struve
Peter Berngardovich Struve
Peter Berngardovich Struve – Пётр Бернгардович Струве was a Russian political economist, philosopher and editor. He started out as a Marxist, later became a liberal and after the Bolshevik revolution joined the White movement...
after the latter moved towards market liberalism
Market liberalism
The term market liberalism is used in two distinct meanings.Especially in the United States, the term is often used as a synonym to classical liberalism...
, he became acquainted with, among others, Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky
Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky
Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky or Myhaylo Tuhan-Baranovsky was the Ukrainian politician, statesman, and a noted Russian-Ukrainian economist, a tutor of Nikolai Kondratiev...
, while authoring articles for Nashe Slovo and helping distribute Iskra
Iskra
Iskra was a political newspaper of Russian socialist emigrants established as the official organ of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Initially, it was managed by Vladimir Lenin, moving as he moved. The first edition was published in Stuttgart on December 1, 1900. Other editions were...
. His close relationship with Plekhanov led Rakovsky to a position between the 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...
and 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....
factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, one he kept from 1903 to 1917; the Bolshevik leader Vladimir 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...
was initially hostile to Rakovsky, and at one point wrote to Karl Radek
Karl Radek
Karl Bernhardovic Radek was a socialist active in the Polish and German movements before World War I and an international Communist leader after the Russian Revolution....
that "we [the Bolsheviks] do not have the same road as his kind of people".
Initially, Rakovsky was expelled from Russia and had to move back to Paris. Returning to the Russian capital in 1900, he remained there until 1902, when his wife's death and the crackdown on socialist groups ordered by Emperor Nicholas II
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
forced him to return to France. Working for a while as a physician in the village of Beaulieu
Beaulieu, Haute-Loire
Beaulieu is a commune in the Haute-Loire department in south-central France.-See also:* Website of Tir Sportif Beaulieu Emblavez with some photo of Beaulieu : *Communes of the Haute-Loire department...
, Haute-Loire, he asked French officials to review his case for naturalization
French nationality law
French nationality law is historically based on the principles of jus soli , according to Ernest Renan's definition, in opposition to the German's definition of nationality, Jus sanguinis , formalized by Fichte.The 1993 Méhaignerie Law required children born in France of foreign parents to request...
, but was refused.
In 1903, following the death of his father, Rakovsky again lived in Paris, where he followed developments of the Russo-Japanese War
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
and spoke out against Russia, attracting, according to Rakovsky himself, the criticism of both Plekhanov and Jules Guesde
Jules Guesde
Jules Basile Guesde was a French socialist journalist and politician.Guesde was the inspiration for a famous quotation by Karl Marx. Shortly before Marx died in 1883, he wrote a letter to Guesde and Paul Lafargue, both of whom already claimed to represent "Marxist" principles...
. He voiced his opposition to the concession made by Karl Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-German philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the coming of World War I in 1914 and was called by some the "Pope of...
to Jean Jaurès
Jean Jaurès
Jean Léon Jaurès was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. Both parties merged in 1905 in...
, one which had allowed socialists to join "bourgeois
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
" governments in times of crisis.
România Muncitoare
Mangalia
Mangalia , is a city and a port on the coast of the Black Sea in the south-east of Constanţa County, Romania.The municipality of Mangalia also administers several summer time seaside resorts: Cap Aurora, Jupiter, Neptun, Olimp, Saturn, Venus.-History:...
. In 1913, his property, valued at some 40,000 United States dollars at the time, was home to 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....
—when the latter visited the Balkans as a press envoy in the Balkan Wars
Balkan Wars
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...
. He was usually present in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
on a weekly basis, and started an intense activity as a journalist, doctor and lawyer. The Balkans correspondent for L'Humanité
L'Humanité
L'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International...
, he was also personally responsible for reviving România Muncitoare
România Muncitoare
România Muncitoare was a socialist newspaper, published in Bucharest, Romania....
, the defunct journal of the Romanian socialist group, provoking successful strike actions which brought him to the attention of officials.
Christian Rakovsky also traveled to Bulgaria, where he eventually sided with the Tesnyatsi
Bulgarian Communist Party
The Bulgarian Communist Party was the communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1990 when the country ceased to be a communist state...
in their conflict with other socialist groups. In 1904, he was present at 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...
's Congress in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, where he gave a speech celebrating the assassination of Russian police chief Vyacheslav von Plehve
Vyacheslav von Plehve
Vyacheslav Konstantinovich von Plehve , also Pléhve, or Pleve was the director of Imperial Russia's police and later Minister of the Interior.- Biography :...
by Socialist-Revolutionary Party
Socialist-Revolutionary Party
thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...
members.
Rakovsky became noted locally especially after 1905, when he organized rallies in support of the Battleship Potemkin revolt
Russian battleship Potemkin
The Potemkin was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the Imperial Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet. The ship was made famous by the Battleship Potemkin uprising, a rebellion of the crew against their oppressive officers in June 1905...
(the events worsened relations between Russia and the Romanian Kingdom
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania was the Romanian state based on a form of parliamentary monarchy between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania...
), carried out a relief operation for the Potemkin crew as their ship sought refuge in Constanţa
Constanta
Constanța is the oldest extant city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast. It is the capital of Constanța County and the largest city in the region....
, and attempted to determine them to set sail for Batumi
Batumi
Batumi is a seaside city on the Black Sea coast and capital of Adjara, an autonomous republic in southwest Georgia. Sometimes considered Georgia's second capital, with a population of 121,806 , Batumi serves as an important port and a commercial center. It is situated in a subtropical zone, rich in...
and aid striking workers there. According to his own account, a parallel scandal occurred when an armed Bolshevik ship was captured in Romanian territorial waters; Rakovsky, who indicated that the weapons on board were to be used in Batumi, faced allegations in the Romanian press that he was preparing a Dobruja
Dobruja
Dobruja is a historical region shared by Bulgaria and Romania, located between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, including the Danube Delta, Romanian coast and the northernmost part of the Bulgarian coast...
n insurrection.
His head was injured during street clashes with police forces
Romanian Police
The Romanian Police is the national police force and main civil law enforcement agency in Romania. It is subordinated to the Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform.-Duties:The Romanian Police are responsible for:...
over the Potemkin issue; while recovering, Rakovsky befriended the Romanian poets Ştefan Octavian Iosif
Stefan Octavian Iosif
Ştefan Octavian Iosif was a Romanian poet and translator of Aromanian origin.-Life:Born in Braşov, Transylvania , he studied in his native town and in Sibiu before completing his education in Paris. While in France, he met Dimitrie Anghel, who would became a long-time friend...
and Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet.His first poem was published in Contemporanul...
, who were publishing works under a common signature—one of the two authored a sympathetic portrait of the socialist leader, based on his recollections from the early 1900s. Throughout these years, Rakovsky, was, according to Iosif and Anghel, "continuously bustling; disappearing and appearing in workers' centers, be it in Brăila
Braila
Brăila is a city in Muntenia, eastern Romania, a port on the Danube and the capital of Brăila County, in the close vicinity of Galaţi.According to the 2002 Romanian census there were 216,292 people living within the city of Brăila, making it the 10th most populous city in Romania.-History:A...
, be it in Galaţi
Galati
Galați is a city and municipality in Romania, the capital of Galați County. Located in the historical region of Moldavia, in the close vicinity of Brăila, Galați is the largest port and sea port on the Danube River and the second largest Romanian port....
, be it in Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
, be it anywhere, always preaching with the same undaunted fervor and fanatical conviction his social credo".
Rakovsky was drawn into a polemic with the Romanian authorities, facing public accusations that, as a Bulgarian, he lacked patriotism; in return, he commented that, if patriotism meant "race prejudice
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, international and civil war, political tyranny and plutocratic
Plutocracy
Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy. The word plutocracy is derived from the Ancient Greek root ploutos, meaning wealth and kratos, meaning to rule or to govern.-Usage:The term plutocracy is generally...
domination", he refused to be identified with it. Upon the outbreak of Romanian Peasants' Revolt
1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt took place in March 1907 in Moldavia and it quickly spread, reaching Wallachia. The main cause was the discontent of the peasants about the inequity of land ownership, which was in the hands of just a few large landowners....
of 1907, Rakovsky was especially vocal: he launched accusations at the National Liberal
National Liberal Party (Romania)
The National Liberal Party , abbreviated to PNL, is a centre-right liberal party in Romania. It is the third-largest party in the Romanian Parliament, with 53 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 in the Senate: behind the centre-right Democratic Liberal Party and the centre-left Social...
government, arguing that, having profited from the early antisemitic message of the revolt, it had violently repressed it from the moment peasants began to attack landowners. Supportive of the thesis according to which the peasantry had revolutionary importance inside Romanian society and Eastern Europe at large, Rakovsky publicized his perspective in the socialist press (writing articles on the subject for România Muncitoare, L'Humanité, Avanti!
Avanti! (Italian newspaper)
Avanti! is an Italian daily newspaper, born as the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party, published since December 25, 1896. It took its name from its German counterpart Vorwärts.-History:...
, Vorwärts
Vorwärts
Vorwärts was the central organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany published daily in Berlin from 1891 to 1933 by decision of the party's Halle Congress, as the successor of Berliner Volksblatt, founded in 1884....
and others). Rakovsky was also one of the journalists suspected of having greatly exaggerated the overall death toll in their accounts: his estimates speak of over 10,000 peasants killed, whereas the government data counted only 421.
He became close to the influential dramatist Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist...
, who was living in Berlin at the time. Caragiale authored his own virulent critique of the Romanian state and its handling of the revolt, an essay titled 1907, din primăvară până în toamnă ("1907, From Spring to Autumn"), which, in its final version, adopted some of Rakovsky's suggestions.
1907 expulsion
After repeatedly condemning repression of the revolt, Rakovsky was, together with other socialists, officially accused of having agitated rebellious sentiment, and consequently expelled from Romanian soil (late 1907). He received news of this action while already abroad, in StuttgartStuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
(at the Seventh Congress 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...
). He decided not to recognize it, and contended that his father had settled in Northern Dobruja
Northern Dobruja
Northern Dobruja is the part of Dobruja within the borders of Romania. It lies between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, bordered in south by Bulgarian Southern Dobruja.-Geography:...
before the Treaty of Berlin that had awarded the region to Romania; the plea was rejected by the Court of Appeal, based on evidence that Rakovsky's father was not in Dobruja before 1880, and that Rakovsky himself used a Bulgarian passport when moving across borders. During the 1920s, Rakovsky was still viewing the incident as a "blatantly illegal act".
The action itself caused protests from leftist politicians and sympathizers, including, among others, the influential Marxist thinker Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
(whose appeal in favor of Rakovsky was described by Iosif and Anghel as evidence of "an almost parental love"). The local socialists organized several rallies in his support, and the return of his citizenship was also backed by Take Ionescu
Take Ionescu
Take or Tache Ionescu was a Romanian centrist politician, journalist, lawyer and diplomat, who also enjoyed reputation as a short story author. Starting his political career as a radical member of the National Liberal Party , he joined the Conservative Party in 1891, and became noted as a social...
's opposition group, the Conservative-Democratic Party. In exile, Rakovsky authored the pamphlet Les persécutions politiques en Roumanie ("Political Persecutions in Romania") and two books (La Roumanie des boyars – "Boyar
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....
Romania", and the since-lost From the Kingdom of Arbitrariness and Cowardice).
Eventually, he traveled back into Romania in October 1909, only to be arrested upon his transit through Brăila County
Braila County
Brăila is a county of Romania, in Muntenia, with the capital city at Brăila.- Demographics :In 2002, Brăila had a population of 373,174 and the population density was 78/km².*Romanians – 98%*Romas, Russians, Lipovans, Aromanians and others....
. According to his recollections, he was for long left stranded on the border with Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
, as officials in the latter country refused to let him pass; the situation had to be settled by negotiations between the two countries. Also according to Rakovsky, the arrest was hidden by the Ion I. C. Brătianu
Ion I. C. Bratianu
Ion I. C. Brătianu was a Romanian politician, leader of the National Liberal Party , the Prime Minister of Romania for five terms, and Foreign Minister on several occasions; he was the eldest son of statesman and PNL leader Ion Brătianu, the brother of Vintilă and Dinu Brătianu, and the father of...
cabinet until it leaked to the press—this, coupled with rumors that he was about to be killed, and Brătianu's statement that he would "rather destroy [Rakovsky] than let [him] back into Rumania", caused a series of important street clashes between his supporters and government forces. On December 9, 1909, a Romanian Railways
Caile Ferate Române
Căile Ferate Române is the official designation of the state railway carrier of Romania. Romania has a railway network of of which are electrified and the total track length is . The network is significantly interconnected with other European railway networks, providing pan-European passenger...
employee named Stoenescu attempted to assassinate Brătianu. The event, which was attributed by Rakovsky to support for his return and by other sources to government manipulation, caused a clampdown on România Muncitoare
România Muncitoare
România Muncitoare was a socialist newspaper, published in Bucharest, Romania....
(among those socialists arrested and interrogated were Gheorghe Cristescu
Gheorghe Cristescu
Gheorghe Cristescu was a Romanian socialist and, for a part of his life, communist militant. Nicknamed "Plăpumarul" , he is also occasionally referred to as "Omul cu lavaliera roşie" , after the most notable of his accessories.-Early activism:Born in Copaciu Gheorghe Cristescu (October 10, 1882...
, I. C. Frimu
I. C. Frimu
Ion Costache Frimu was a Romanian socialist militant and politician, a leading member of the Romanian Social Democratic Party and labor activist...
, and Dumitru Marinescu).
Rakovsky secretly returned to Romania in 1911, giving himself up in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
. According to Rakovsky, he was again expelled, holding a Romanian passport, to Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
, where he was swiftly arrested by the Young Turks
Young Turks
The Young Turks , from French: Les Jeunes Turcs) were a coalition of various groups favouring reformation of the administration of the Ottoman Empire. The movement was against the absolute monarchy of the Ottoman Sultan and favoured a re-installation of the short-lived Kanûn-ı Esâsî constitution...
government but released soon after. He subsequently left for Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
, where he established the Bulgarian socialist journal Napred
Napred
The Workers Educational Society Napred was a socialist organization founded in Slovakia in February 1869. It was under the direct influence of a similar organization in Vienna. Napred represented the first emergence of the socialist movement in Slovakia....
. Ultimately, the new Petre P. Carp
Petre P. Carp
Petre P. Carp , commonly rendered as P. P. Carp, was a Romanian conservative politician and literary critic who served as a Prime Minister of Romania for two terms...
Conservative
Conservative Party (Romania, 1880-1918)
The Conservative Party was between 1880 and 1918 one of Romania's two most important parties, the other one being the Liberal Party...
cabinet agreed to allow his return to Romania, following pressures from the French Premier
Prime Minister of France
The Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the head of government and of the Council of Ministers of France. The head of state is the President of the French Republic...
Georges Clemenceau
Georges Clemenceau
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman, physician and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of the major voices behind the Treaty of Versailles at the...
(who answered an appeal by Jean Jaurès
Jean Jaurès
Jean Léon Jaurès was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. Both parties merged in 1905 in...
). According to Rakovsky, this was also determined by the Conservative change in policies towards the peasantry. He unsuccessfully ran for Parliament
Parliament of Romania
The Parliament of Romania is made up of two chambers:*The Chamber of Deputies*The SenatePrior to the modifications of the Constitution in 2003, the two houses had identical attributes. A text of a law had to be approved by both houses...
during the elections of that year (and several others in succession), being fully reinstated as a citizen in April 1912. Romanian historian Stelian Tănase
Stelian Tanase
Stelian Tănase is a Romanian writer, historian, journalist, political analyst, and talk show host. Having briefly engaged in politics during the early 1990s, after the fall of the Communist regime, he has remained a leading figure of the Romanian civil society.A founding member of both the Group...
contends that the expulsion had instilled resentment in Rakovsky; earlier, the leading National Liberal politician Ion G. Duca
Ion G. Duca
Ion Gheorghe Duca was prime minister of Romania from November 14 to December 30, 1933, when he was assassinated for his efforts to suppress the fascist Iron Guard movement.-Life and political career:...
himself had argued that Rakovsky was developing a "hatred for Romania".
PSDR and Zimmerwald Movement
Romanian Social Democratic Party (defunct)
The Romanian Social Democratic Party was a social-democratic political party in Romania. It published the magazine România Muncitoare, and later Socialismul, Lumea Nouă, and Libertatea.-Early party:...
(PSDR), serving as its president. In May 1912, he helped organize a mourning session for the centennial of Russian rule in Bessarabia, and authored numerous new articles on the matter. He was afterwards involved in calling for peace during the Balkan Wars
Balkan Wars
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...
; notably, Rakovsky expressed criticism of Romania's invasion of Bulgaria during the Second Balkan War
Second Balkan War
The Second Balkan War was a conflict which broke out when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 29 June 1913. Bulgaria had a prewar agreement about the division of region of Macedonia...
, and called on Romanian authorities not to annex Southern Dobruja
Southern Dobruja
Southern Dobruja is an area of north-eastern Bulgaria comprising the administrative districts named for its two principal cities of Dobrich and Silistra...
. Alongside Frimu, Bujor, Ecaterina Arbore
Ecaterina Arbore
Ecaterina Arbore, Arbore-Ralli or Ralli-Arbore , daughter of Zamfir Arbore , was a Romanian, Soviet and Moldovan communist activist and official.-Early life:She trained towards a medical...
and others, he lectured at the PSDR's propaganda school during the short period the latter was in existence (in 1910 and again in 1912–1913).
In 1913, Rakovsky was married a second time, to Alexandrina Alexandrescu (also known as Ileana Pralea), a socialist militant and intellectual, who taught mathematics in Ploieşti
Ploiesti
Ploiești is the county seat of Prahova County and lies in the historical region of Wallachia in Romania. The city is located north of Bucharest....
. Alexandrescu was herself a friend of Dobrogeanu-Gherea and an acquaintance of Caragiale. She had previously been married to Filip Codreanu, a 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"...
activist born in Bessarabia, with whom she had a daughter, Elena, and a son, Radu.
Rallying with the left wing of international social democracy
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
during the early stages of World War I, Rakovsky later indicated that he had been purposely informed of the controversial pro-war stance taken by the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
by the pro-Entente
Triple Entente
The Triple Entente was the name given to the alliance among Britain, France and Russia after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907....
Romanian Foreign Minister Emanuel Porumbaru
Emanuel Porumbaru
Emanuel Porumbaru was a Romanian politician who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania from January 4, 1914 until December 7, 1916 under the reign of Romanian Kings Carol I and Ferdinand....
. With staff of the Menshevik paper Nashe Slovo (edited by 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....
), he was among the most prominent socialist pacifists
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
of the period. Reflecting his ideological priorities, România Muncitoare
România Muncitoare
România Muncitoare was a socialist newspaper, published in Bucharest, Romania....
s title was changed into Jos Răsboiul! ("Down with war!")—it was later to be known as Lupta Zilnică (the "Daily combat").
Heavily critical of the French Socialist Party's decision to join the René Viviani
René Viviani
Jean Raphaël Adrien René Viviani was a French politician of the Third Republic, who served as Prime Minister for the first year of World War I. He was born in Sidi Bel Abbès, in French Algeria. In France he sought to protect the rights of socialists and trade union workers.-Biography:His...
cabinet (deeming it "an abdication"), he stressed the responsibility of all European countries in provoking the war, and adhered to Trotsky's vision of a "Peace without indemnities or annexations" as an alternative to "imperialist
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
war". According to Rakovsky, tensions between the French SFIO
Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière
The French Section of the Workers' International , founded in 1905, was a French socialist political party, designed as the local section of the Second International...
and the German Social Democrats were reflecting not just context, but major ideological differences.
Present in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in March 1915, he attended the Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
Congress of the Italian Socialist Party
Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...
, during which he attempted to persuade it to condemn irredentist goals
Italia irredenta
Italian irredentism was an Italian Irredentist movement that aimed at the unification of all ethnically Italian peoples....
. In July, after convening the Bucharest Conference, he and Vasil Kolarov
Vasil Kolarov
Vasil Petrov Kolarov was a Bulgarian communist political leader and leading functionary in the Communist International.-Early years:Kolarov was born in Shumen, Bulgaria on 16 July 1877, the son of a shoemaker...
established the Revolutionary Balkan Social Democratic Labor Federation
Balkan Communist Federation
The Balkan Federation was a project about the creation of a Balkan federation or confederation, based mainly on left political ideas.The concept of a Balkan federation emerged at the late 19th century from among left political forces in the region...
(comprising the left-leaning socialist parties of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
and Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
), and Rakovsky was elected first secretary of its Central Bureau.
Subsequently, together with the Italian Socialist delegates (Oddino Morgari
Oddino Morgari
Oddino Morgari was an Italian socialist journalist and politician.-Early life:Initially a Mazzinian radical, he became a member of the Italian Socialist Party in 1891, and was elected leader of its local section in Turin the following year...
, Giacinto Menotti Serrati
Giacinto Menotti Serrati
Giacinto Menotti Serrati was an Italian communist politician. He was born in Spotorno, near Savona and died in Asso, near Como....
, and Angelica Balabanoff
Angelica Balabanoff
Angelica Balabanoff was a Jewish-Italian communist and social democratic activist.-Revolutionary activities:...
among them), Rakovsky was instrumental in convening the anti-war international socialist 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.-...
in September 1915. During the congress, he came into open conflict with Lenin, after the latter voiced the Zimmerwald Left
Zimmerwald Left
The Zimmerwald Left was a revolutionary minority fraction at the Zimmerwald Peace Conference of 1915, headed by Lenin. The Left of the Zimmerwald Congress was made up of eight out of 38 people: Lenin, Zinoviev , Jānis K. Bērziņš , Karl Radek , Julian Borchardt , Fritz Platten , Zeth Höglund and...
's opposition to the resolution (at one point, Rakovsky reportedly lost his temper and grabbed Lenin, causing him to temporarily leave the hall in protest). Later, he continued to mediate between Lenin and the Second International, a situation from which emerged a circular letter that complemented the Zimmerwald Manifesto while being more radical in tone. In October 1915, he reportedly did not protest Bulgaria's entry into the war
Bulgaria during World War I
The Kingdom of Bulgaria participated in World War I on the side of the Central Powers between 15 October 1915, when the country declared war on Serbia, until 29 September 1918, when the Armistice of Thessalonica was signed....
—this information was contradicted by Trotsky, who also indicated that the Tesniatsy
Bulgarian Communist Party
The Bulgarian Communist Party was the communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1990 when the country ceased to be a communist state...
had been the target of a government crackdown at that exact moment.
Rakovsky ran for Parliament for a final time during 1916, and again lost when contesting a seat in Covurlui County. Again arrested in 1916, after being accused of planning rebellion during a violent incident in Galaţi
Galati
Galați is a city and municipality in Romania, the capital of Galați County. Located in the historical region of Moldavia, in the close vicinity of Brăila, Galați is the largest port and sea port on the Danube River and the second largest Romanian port....
, he was, according to his own account, freed by a general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
which constituted "an outburst of indignation among the workers". Evaluating the situation in Romania, he identified the two main pro-Entente political forces of the moment, the groups led by Take Ionescu
Take Ionescu
Take or Tache Ionescu was a Romanian centrist politician, journalist, lawyer and diplomat, who also enjoyed reputation as a short story author. Starting his political career as a radical member of the National Liberal Party , he joined the Conservative Party in 1891, and became noted as a social...
and Nicolae Filipescu, with, respectively, "corruption" and "reaction
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
".
Suspicions also rose that he had been contacted by German intelligence, that his 1915 trip to Italy had served German interests, and that he was being subsidized with German money. Rakovsky also drew attention to himself after welcoming to Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
the pro-German maverick socialist Alexander Parvus
Alexander Parvus
Alexander Lvovich Parvus , born Israel Lazarevich Gelfand , was a Marxist theoretician, a Russian revolutionary, and a controversial activist in the Social Democratic Party of Germany...
. His independence was consequently challenged by the interventionist
Interventionism (politics)
Interventionism is a term for a policy of non-defensive activity undertaken by a nation-state, or other geo-political jurisdiction of a lesser or greater nature, to manipulate an economy or society...
paper Adevărul
Adevarul
Adevărul is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in 1871 and reestablished in 1888, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published during the Romanian Kingdom's existence, adopting an independent pro-democratic position, advocating land reform and universal suffrage...
, a former socialist venue, who called Rakovsky "an adventurer without scruples", and viewed him as employed by Parvus and other German socialists. Rakovsky himself alleged that, "under the mask of independence", Adevărul and its editor Constantin Mille
Constantin Mille
Constantin Mille was a Romanian journalist, novelist, poet, lawyer, and socialist militant, as well as a prominent human rights activist...
were in the pay of Take Ionescu. After Romania's entry into the conflict on the side of the Entente in August 1916, having failed to attend the Kienthal Conference
Kienthal Conference
The Kienthal Conference was held from April 24 to 30, 1916. Like its 1915 predecessor in Zimmerwald, it was an international conference of socialists who opposed the First World War.- Background :...
due to the closure of borders, he was placed under surveillance and ultimately imprisoned in September, based on the belief that he was acting as a German spy
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
. As Bucharest fell to the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
during the 1916 campaign
Romanian Campaign (World War I)
The Romanian Campaign was part of the Balkan theatre of World War I, with Romania and Russia allied against the armies of the Central Powers. Fighting took place from August 1916 to December 1917, across most of present-day Romania, including Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian...
, he was taken by Romanian authorities to their refuge in Iaşi. Held until after the February Revolution
February 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...
, he was freed by the Russian Army on May 1, 1917, and immediately left for 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,...
.
October Revolution
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
(the new name of Saint Petersburg) in the spring of 1917. His anti-war activism almost got him arrested; Rakovsky managed to flee in August, and was present in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
for the Third Zimmerwald Conference
Third Zimmerwald Conference
The Third Zimmerwald Conference or the Stockholm Conference of 1917 was the third and final of the anti-war socialist conferences that had included Zimmerwald and Kienthal .- Background :...
; he remained there and, with Karl Radek
Karl Radek
Karl Bernhardovic Radek was a socialist active in the Polish and German movements before World War I and an international Communist leader after the Russian Revolution....
, issued propaganda material in support of the Russian revolutionaries. Present in the internationalist
Proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is a Marxist social class concept based on the view that capitalism is now a global system, and therefore the working class must act as a global class if it is to defeat it...
faction of the Mensheviks, he joined the 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 in December 1917 or early 1918, 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...
(although he was occasionally listed among the Old Bolsheviks). Rakovsky later stated that he had friendly relations with the Bolsheviks from early autumn 1917, when, during the attempted putsch
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
of Lavr Kornilov
Lavr Kornilov
Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov was a military intelligence officer, explorer, and general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and the ensuing Russian Civil War...
, he was hidden by these in Sestroretsk
Sestroretsk
Sestroretsk is a municipal town in Kurortny District of the federal city of St. Petersburg, Russia, located on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, the Sestra River and the Sestroretskiy Lake northwest of St. Petersburg...
.
His rise in influence and his approval of world revolution
World revolution
World revolution is the Marxist concept of overthrowing capitalism in all countries through the conscious revolutionary action of the organized working class...
led him to seek Lenin's support for a Bolshevik government over Romania, at a time when a similar attempt was being made by the Odessa-based Romanian Social Democratic Action Committee, under the guidance of Mihai Gheorghiu Bujor; during the period, a group of one hundred Russian Bolsheviks had infiltrated Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
with the goal of assassinating King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....
Ferdinand I
Ferdinand I of Romania
Ferdinand was the King of Romania from 10 October 1914 until his death.-Early life:Born in Sigmaringen in southwestern Germany, the Roman Catholic Prince Ferdinand Viktor Albert Meinrad of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, later simply of Hohenzollern, was a son of Leopold, Prince of...
and organizing a coup. Eventually, Lenin decided in favor of a unified project, and called on Bujor and Rakovsky to form a single leadership (which also included the Romanian expatriates Alecu Constantinescu
Alecu Constantinescu
Alexandru "Alecu" Constantinescu was Romanian trade unionist, journalist and socialist and pacifist militant, one of the major advocates of the transformation of the Romanian socialist movement into a communist one....
and Ion Dic Dicescu
Ion Dic Dicescu
Ion Dic Dicescu was a Romanian communist and journalist.Although born in Bucharest, he spend most of his life in Russia/Soviet Union . He became a member of the Bolshevik Party and from 1922 a teacher at various Moscow universities...
).
As the coup was under preparation in December 1917, Rakovsky was present on the border and waiting a signal to enter the country. When Bolsheviks were arrested and the move was overturned, he was probably responsible for ordering the arrest of Romania's representative to Petrograd, Constantin I. Diamandy, and his entire staff (all of whom were used as hostage
Hostage
A hostage is a person or entity which is held by a captor. The original definition meant that this was handed over by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against certain acts of war...
s, pending the release of prisoners taken in Iaşi). Trotsky, who was by then Russia's People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs
Narkomindel
The Ministry of External Relations of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , formed on 16 July 1923, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. It was known as the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs , or Narkomindel, until 1946. The Ministry was known as the...
(Foreign Minister
Foreign Minister of Russia
This is a list of foreign ministers of Tsardom of Russia, Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and Russian Federation.-Heads of Posolsky Prikaz, 1549-1699:*Ivan Viskovatyi 1549-62*Andrey Vasilyev 1562-1570*Brothers Vasily and Andrey Shchelkalov 1570-1601...
), called on the Romanian government of Ion I. C. Brătianu
Ion I. C. Bratianu
Ion I. C. Brătianu was a Romanian politician, leader of the National Liberal Party , the Prime Minister of Romania for five terms, and Foreign Minister on several occasions; he was the eldest son of statesman and PNL leader Ion Brătianu, the brother of Vintilă and Dinu Brătianu, and the father of...
to hand in persons captured, indicating that he would otherwise encourage the communist activities of Romanian refugees on Russian soil, and receiving a reply according to which no such arrests had occurred.
At the same time, Rakovsky regained Odessa, where he became a leader of the Bolshevik administrative body (Rumcherod
Rumcherod
Rumcherod was a self-proclaimed, unrecognized, and short-lived organ of Soviet power in the South-Western part of Russian Empire that functioned during May 1917–May 1918...
), ordered violent reprisals to be aimed at Romanian nationals present in the city, and issued agitprop
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
literature in Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
.
As Russia negotiated 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,...
with Germany, he ordered Rumcherod troops to march towards Romania, which was by then giving in to the German advances and preparing to sign its own peace. Initially stalled by a much-criticized temporary armistice
Armistice
An armistice is a situation in a war where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, but may be just a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace...
with Romanian Army leader Alexandru Averescu
Alexandru Averescu
Alexandru Averescu was a Romanian marshal and populist politician. A Romanian Armed Forces Commander during World War I, he served as Prime Minister of three separate cabinets . He first rose to prominence during the peasant's revolt of 1907, which he helped repress in violence...
, Rakovsky ordered a fresh offensive in Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
, but had to retreat when the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
, confronted with Trotsky's refusal to accept their version of a Russo-German peace, began their own military operation and occupied Odessa (setting free Romanians who had been imprisoned there). On March 9, 1918, Rakovsky signed a treaty with Romania regarding the evacuation of Russian troops from Bessarabia, which allowed for the Moldavian Democratic Republic
Moldavian Democratic Republic
The Moldavian Democratic Republic , a.k.a. Moldavian Republic, was the state proclaimed on by Sfatul Ţării of Bessarabia, elected in October-November 1917 in the wake of the February Revolution and disintegration of the political power in the Russian Empire.Sfatul Ţării was its legislative body,...
to join Romania. In May, Romania conceded to the demands of the Central Powers (see Treaty of Bucharest, 1918
Treaty of Bucharest, 1918
The Treaty of Bucharest was a peace treaty which the German Empire forced Romania to sign on 7 May 1918 following the Romanian campaign of 1916-1917.-Main terms of the treaty:...
).
In April–May 1918, he negotiated with the Ukrainian People's Republic
Ukrainian People's Republic
The Ukrainian People's Republic or Ukrainian National Republic was a republic that was declared in part of the territory of modern Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, eventually headed by Symon Petliura.-Revolutionary Wave:...
Tsentral'na Rada, then with the Hetmanate
Hetmanate
The Ukrainian State or The Hetmanate was a short-lived polity in Ukraine, installed by Ukrainian Cossacks and military organizations under the support of the Central Powers, after disbanding the Central Rada of the Ukrainian National Republic on 28 April 1918.-History:On April 29, 1918 the head...
of Pavlo Skoropadsky
Pavlo Skoropadsky
Pavlo Petrovych Skoropadskyi 3 May 1873, Wiesbaden, Germany – 26 April 1945, Metten monastery clinic, Bavaria, Germany) was a Ukrainian politician, earlier an aristocrat and decorated Imperial Russian Army general...
, as well as with German forces (see Ukraine after the Russian Revolution
Ukraine after the Russian Revolution
Ukrainian territory was fought over by various factions after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War, which added the collapse of Austria-Hungary to that of the Imperial Russia. The crumbling of the empires had a great effect on the Ukrainian nationalist movement and in the short...
). Soon after, Rakovsky left for Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
(where the First Republic
First Austrian Republic
The Republic of Austria encompasses the period of Austrian history following the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of September 1919, the settlement after the end of World War I which put an end to the Republic of German Austria, continuing up to World War II...
had been proclaimed), being received by Foreign Minister
Foreign Minister of Austria
The Foreign Minister of Austria is responsible for handling Austria's foreign policy.-Under the First Austrian Republic:* Victor Adler* Otto Bauer* Karl Renner* Michael Mayr* Johann Schober* Walter Breisky* Leopold Hennet* Alfred Grünberger...
Victor Adler
Victor Adler
----Victor Adler was an Austrian Social Democratic leader.Born in Prague, Adler received a university degree in Vienna in 1881. He founded the Socialist movement in Austria and created the Marxist journals Gleicheit in 1886 and Arbeiter-Zeitung in 1889...
(a member of Karl Renner
Karl Renner
Karl Renner was an Austrian politician. He was born in Untertannowitz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and died in Vienna...
's Social Democratic Party of Austria
Social Democratic Party of Austria
The Social Democratic Party of Austria is one of the oldest political parties in Austria. The SPÖ is one of the two major parties in Austria, and has ties to trade unions and the Austrian Chamber of Labour. The SPÖ is among the few mainstream European social-democratic parties that have preserved...
cabinet). Rakovsky's real goal was to reach Germany and negotiate the situation in Ukraine, but he was expelled upon arrival to that country.
Escorted, together with Adolph Joffe
Adolph Joffe
Adolph Abramovich Joffe was a Communist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and a Soviet diplomat of Karaim descent.-Revolutionary career:...
and Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
, to the German-aligned Belarusian National Republic
Belarusian National Republic
The Belarusian People's Republic was a self-declared independent Belarusian state, which declared independence in 1918. It is also called the Belarusian Democratic Republic or the Belarusian National Republic, in order to distinguish it from Communist People's Republics...
, he caught news of the collapse of the German Empire
German Revolution
The German Revolution was the politically-driven civil conflict in Germany at the end of World War I, which resulted in the replacement of Germany's imperial government with a republic...
and was selected as a delegate to the German workers' council
Workers' council
A workers' council, or revolutionary councils, is the phenomenon where a single place of work or enterprise, such as a factory, school, or farm, is controlled collectively by the workers of that workplace, through the core principle of temporary and instantly revocable delegates.In a system with...
s. He and all other envoys were arrested by German soldiers in Kaunas
Kaunas
Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...
, and sent to Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
, then to Homyel
Homyel
Gomel ; also Homiel, Homel is the administrative center of Gomel Voblast and the second-largest city in Belarus. It has a population of 482,652...
, before making their way to Moscow.
Second Ukrainian government
After the subsequent Soviet offensive in UkraineUkraine
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...
, Lenin appointed Rakovsky as the Chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Workers and Peasants of Ukraine, replacing Georgy Pyatakov
Georgy Pyatakov
Georgy Leonidovich Pyatakov was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader during the Russian Revolution, and member of the Left Opposition.Pyatakov was born August 6, 1890 in the settlement of the Mariinsky sugar factory which was owned by his father, an ethnic Russian, Leonid Timofeyevich Pyatakov.He...
on January 16, 1919 due to the latter's argument with Fyodor Sergeyev
Fyodor Sergeyev
Fyodor Andreyevich Sergeyev , better known as Comrade Artyom , was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, agitator, and journalist. He was a close friend of Sergei Kirov and Stalin...
fpr excessive interference in Ukrainian affairs. On March 29, 1919 the government was reorganized as the Soviet of the People's Commissars
Council of People's Commissars (Ukraine)
Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR was the highest governing body of executive power in Ukrainian SSR from January 1919 to 1946. The council replaced the Temporary Workers-Peasants Government of Ukraine...
. According to the British author Arthur Ransome
Arthur Ransome
Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist, best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. These tell of school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Many of the books involve sailing; other common subjects...
, present in Moscow during early that year, "It had been found that the views of the Pyatakov government were further left than those of its supporters, and so Pyatakov had given way to Rakovsky who was better able to conduct a more moderate policy". While in office, Rakovsky totally ignored Ukrainian issues, considering Ukraine and its language merely "an invention" of intellectuals.
At the time, Rakovsky assessed the situation created by the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
, and advised his superiors to build warm relations with both Mustafa Kemal
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was an Ottoman and Turkish army officer, revolutionary statesman, writer, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of the Republic of Turkey....
's 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 the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, as a camp of countries dissatisfied with policies of the Allied Powers
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
. Reviewing his previous stance on Bessarabia, Rakovsky eventually subscribed to the Bolshevik condemnation of Greater Romania
Greater Romania
The Greater Romania generally refers to the territory of Romania in the years between the First World War and the Second World War, the largest geographical extent of Romania up to that time and its largest peacetime extent ever ; more precisely, it refers to the territory of the Kingdom of...
. During the Paris Peace Conference
Paris Peace Conference, 1919
The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...
, the Romanian delegation attributed the shortage in supply in Bessarabia and Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
a Bolshevik conspiracy
Conspiracy (political)
In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of persons united in the goal of usurping or overthrowing an established political power. Typically, the final goal is to gain power through a revolutionary coup d'état or through assassination....
centered on Rakovsky; various French reports of the time gave contradictory assessments (while some credited Rakovsky with direct influence on Soviet foreign policy, others dismissed the notion that Russia had any such projects).
Rakovsky simultaneously served as Soviet Ukraine's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and a member of the South West Front's Revolutionary Military Council
Political commissar
The political commissar is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education and organisation, and loyalty to the government of the military...
, contributing to the defeat of the White Army
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
and Ukrainian nationalists during the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
, while theorizing that "Ukraine was a laboratory of internationalism
Proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is a Marxist social class concept based on the view that capitalism is now a global system, and therefore the working class must act as a global class if it is to defeat it...
" and "a decisive factor in world revolution". Rakovsky's presence was also decisive in rallying the dissident Borotbists
Borotbists
The Borotba Party was a peasant based left-nationalist political party in Ukraine. It arose in May 1918 after the split in the Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party on the basis of supporting Soviet power in Ukraine. Similar to Russian Left-SR it got its name from the central organ of the...
to the Bolshevik faction's central bodies—he was subsequently confronted with a degree of Borotbist opposition inside his government. According to American politologist Jerry F. Hough
Jerry F. Hough
Jerry F. Hough is the James B. Duke Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Hough has taught at Duke since 1973; he previously taught at the University of Toronto and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and he has served as a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution....
, his appointment and policies were evidence of Russification
Russification
Russification is an adoption of the Russian language or some other Russian attributes by non-Russian communities...
, a program requested by Lenin himself; Rakovsky's view contrasted with that supported by Stalin, who, at the time, was calling for increased Ukrainianization.
In March 1919, Christian Rakovsky was one of the founding members of the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, where he represented the Balkan Communist Federation
Balkan Communist Federation
The Balkan Federation was a project about the creation of a Balkan federation or confederation, based mainly on left political ideas.The concept of a Balkan federation emerged at the late 19th century from among left political forces in the region...
. During those months, when control over the entire Ukraine was made possible by the offensive against Directorate
Directorate of Ukraine
The Directorate, or Directory was a provisional revolutionary state committee of the Ukrainian National Republic, formed in 1918 by the Ukrainian National Union in rebellion against Skoropadsky's regime....
forces, he expressed his support for the Yekaterinoslav
Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk formerly Yekaterinoslav is Ukraine's third largest city with one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central region of the country...
wing of the Ukrainian Communist Party—following its wishes, he subordinated the Ukrainian Communists to the Russian Communist Party
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...
and argued that a separate Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
was "luxury" for such a small grouping.
In summer, as Rakovsky's government briefly lost control of Ukraine, his policies became hotly contested by partisans of Ukrainian autonomy inside the Party, who held a conference in Homyel (one which Rakovsky did not attend). At the Fourth Congress of the Ukrainian Party (March 1920), the leadership of Rakovsky, Stanislav Kosior
Stanislav Kosior
Stanislav Vikentyevich Kosior, sometimes spelled Kossior was one of three Kosior brothers, Polish-born Soviet politicians. He was General Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, deputy prime minister of the USSR, and a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...
, and Dmitry Manuilsky
Dmitry Manuilsky
Dmitriy Manuilsky, or Dmytro Zakharovych Manuilsky was an important Bolshevik. He was the son of an Orthodox priest from a Ukrainian village. After secondary school he enrolled in the University of St...
was not reelected. Attacks on them caused problems with the Russian Party; as Lenin himself sided with Rakovsky, a delegation comprising Trotsky, Lev Kamenev
Lev Kamenev
Lev Borisovich Kamenev , born Rozenfeld , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was briefly head of state of the new republic in 1917, and from 1923-24 the acting Premier in the last year of Lenin's life....
and Adolph Joffe
Adolph Joffe
Adolph Abramovich Joffe was a Communist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and a Soviet diplomat of Karaim descent.-Revolutionary career:...
left for Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
to discuss the matter with local leaders. In order to curb the crisis, the Ukrainian Party was subjected to a major purge, during which pro-autonomy opposition was removed from its ranks and the former leaders were reinstated.
At the time, Rakovsky and Georgy Chicherin
Georgy Chicherin
Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin was a Marxist revolutionary and a Soviet politician. He served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the Soviet government from March 1918 to 1930.-Childhood and early career:...
received harsh criticism from the Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
communist leaders Béla Kun
Béla Kun
Béla Kun , born Béla Kohn, was a Hungarian Communist politician and a Bolshevik Revolutionary who led the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919.- Early life :...
, for allegedly refusing aid to the Hungarian Soviet Republic
Hungarian Soviet Republic
The Hungarian Soviet Republic or Soviet Republic of Hungary was a short-lived Communist state established in Hungary in the aftermath of World War I....
and thus contributing to its fall. This appears not to have been true, as Rakovsky reportedly urged Lenin to finance the Kun even as the latter faced the intervention of troops from both Romania and Czechoslovakia
First Republic of Czechoslovakia
-Independence:The Czechoslovak declaration of independence was published by the Czechoslovak National Council, signed by Masaryk, Štefánik and Beneš on October 18, 1918 in Paris, and proclaimed on October 28 in Prague...
. Lenin wrote back to Kun informing him that the Central Committee
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
was satisfied with the way in which Rakovsky and Chicherin had carried out their mission.
Reinstating of Soviet dominance and international conferences
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...
forces—the Kiev Offensive (see Polish-Soviet War in 1920
Polish-Soviet War in 1920
The Polish–Soviet war erupted in 1920 in the aftermath of World War I. The root causes were twofold: a territorial dispute dating back to Polish-Russian wars in the 17–18th centuries; and a clash of ideology due to USSR's goal of spreading communist rule further west, to Europe...
)—, Rakovsky's government took measures regarding collectivization; according to his biographer Gus Fagan, he became himself a proponent of greater Ukrainian autonomy, and advocated both Ukrainization through the complete integration of Borotbists
Borotbists
The Borotba Party was a peasant based left-nationalist political party in Ukraine. It arose in May 1918 after the split in the Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party on the basis of supporting Soviet power in Ukraine. Similar to Russian Left-SR it got its name from the central organ of the...
into Party structures and a slower pace in communization. He notably came into conflict with the Russian Party after his second executive had its independent Commissariat of Foreign Trade replaced with an office under the control of central authorities. He continued to pressure for a measure of independence in Ukrainian economy, and, during the early 1920s, the republic sealed its own trade agreements with other European countries.
Rakovsky remained a Romanian citizen for the entire period. In 1921, he was officially summoned to be tried by a court-martial
Court-martial
A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
for "crime against the security of the Romanian state". He was sentenced to death
Death Sentence
Death Sentence is a short story by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the November 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov.-Plot summary:...
in absentia
In absentia
In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...
(1924), a move which may have been prompted by the similar verdict given by a Soviet Court to Ion Inculeţ
Ion Inculet
Ion C. Inculeț was a Bessarabian politician and the president of the Moldavian Democratic Republic. Also, he was a minister in Romania.-Early career:...
(who had led the Moldavian Democratic Republic
Moldavian Democratic Republic
The Moldavian Democratic Republic , a.k.a. Moldavian Republic, was the state proclaimed on by Sfatul Ţării of Bessarabia, elected in October-November 1917 in the wake of the February Revolution and disintegration of the political power in the Russian Empire.Sfatul Ţării was its legislative body,...
's Legislative Assembly
Sfatul Tarii
Sfatul Țării was, in 1917-1918, the National Assembly of the Governorate of Bessarabia of the disintegrating Russian Empire, which proclaimed the independent Moldavian Democratic Republic in December 1917, and then union with Romania in April 1918.-Russian participation in World War I:In August...
that voted union with Romania). As the Socialist Party of Romania
Socialist Party of Romania
The Socialist Party of Romania was a Romanian socialist political party, created on December 11, 1918 by members of the Romanian Social Democratic Party , after the latter emerged from clandestinity...
delegation (Gheorghe Cristescu
Gheorghe Cristescu
Gheorghe Cristescu was a Romanian socialist and, for a part of his life, communist militant. Nicknamed "Plăpumarul" , he is also occasionally referred to as "Omul cu lavaliera roşie" , after the most notable of his accessories.-Early activism:Born in Copaciu Gheorghe Cristescu (October 10, 1882...
, Eugen Rozvan
Eugen Rozvan
Eugen Rozvan was a Hungarian-born Romanian communist activist, lawyer, and Marxist historian, who settled in the Soviet Union late in his life.-Biography:...
, David Fabian, Constantin Popovici, Ioan Flueraş
Ioan Flueras
Ioan Flueraş was a Romanian social democratic politician and a victim of the communist regime.-Early activities:...
, and Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea or Alexandru Gherea was a Romanian communist militant and son of socialist, sociologist and literary critic Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea...
) voted to adhere to the Comintern, Rakovsky and Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...
pressured the group to expel those of its members who supported Greater Romania (including Flueraş and Popovici, as well as Iosif Jumanca and Leon Ghelerter).
In February 1922, he was sent to Berlin in order to negotiate with German officials, and, in March, was part of the official delegation to the Genoa Conference
Genoa Conference
The Genoa Conference was held in Genoa, Italy in 1922 from 10 April to 19 May. At this conference, the representatives of 34 countries convened to speak about monetary economics in the wake of World War I...
—under the leadership of Georgy Chicherin
Georgy Chicherin
Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin was a Marxist revolutionary and a Soviet politician. He served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the Soviet government from March 1918 to 1930.-Childhood and early career:...
. Rakovsky himself was virulently opposed to any stalemate with the Allies
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
, and urged his delegation not to abandon policies over promises of deescalation and trade. A leader of the delegation's commissions on economic aid, loans and government debt
Government debt
Government debt is money owed by a central government. In the US, "government debt" may also refer to the debt of a municipal or local government...
, he was also charged with renewing contacts with Germany—together with Adolph Joffe
Adolph Joffe
Adolph Abramovich Joffe was a Communist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and a Soviet diplomat of Karaim descent.-Revolutionary career:...
, he discussed the matter with the pro-Soviet Ago von Maltzan, and, as Russia failed to reach an agreement with the Allies, managed to obtain from Germany promises of cooperation (see Treaty of Rapallo, 1922
Treaty of Rapallo, 1922
The Treaty of Rapallo was an agreement signed at the Hotel Imperiale in the Italian town of Rapallo on 16 April, 1922 between Germany and Soviet Russia under which each renounced all territorial and financial claims against the other following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and World War I.The two...
). Two years later, when captured by the Bolsheviks, Eser
Socialist-Revolutionary Party
thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...
conspirator Boris Savinkov
Boris Savinkov
Boris Viktorovich Savinkov was a Russian writer and revolutionary terrorist...
allegedly confessed that he intended to have both Rakovsky and Chicherin killed in Berlin, as they returned from Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
. In November 1922, Rakovsky attended the Conference of Lausanne
Conference of Lausanne
The Conference of Lausanne was a conference held in Lausanne, Switzerland during 1922 and 1923. Its purpose was the negotiation of a treaty to replace the Treaty of Sèvres, which, under the new government of Kemal Pasha, was no longer recognised by Turkey....
, where he was confronted with the assassination of his fellow diplomat Vaslav Vorovsky
V. V. Vorovsky
Vatslav Vatslavovich Vorovsky was a Marxist revolutionary, literary critic, and Soviet Russian diplomat...
by the émigré
White Emigre
A white émigré was a Russian who emigrated from Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, and who was in opposition to the contemporary Russian political climate....
Maurice Conradi.
As the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was being created, Rakovsky became opposed to the new central leadership over the issue of self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
for the Soviet republics
Republics of the Soviet Union
The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics of the Soviet Union were ethnically-based administrative units that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union...
and autonomous republics
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....
. This followed the dispute between, on one side, 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...
, Zinoviev, Totsky and Kamenev, and, on the other, the leadership of the Georgian SSR (see Georgian Affair
Georgian Affair
The Georgian Affair of 1922 was a political conflict within the Soviet leadership about the way in which social and political transformation was to be achieved in the Georgian SSR...
). At the time, he evidenced a "permanent struggle which the so-called independent and autonomous republics had to carry out to safeguard not only their prerogatives but their very own existence". Arguing in favor of extending the revolution from Ukraine to the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
, and indicating his belief that the peasantry was being alienated by internationalist
Proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is a Marxist social class concept based on the view that capitalism is now a global system, and therefore the working class must act as a global class if it is to defeat it...
messages, Rakovsky cited concerns that centralism
Centralized government
A centralized or centralised government is one in which power or legal authority is exerted or coordinated by a de facto political executive to which federal states, local authorities, and smaller units are considered subject...
was placing Soviet influence in peril, and called for "carrying out a correct theoretical and practical solution to the national question within the boundaries of the Soviet Union". In November 1922, he successfully proposed the formation of a Soviet of Nationalities
Soviet of Nationalities
The Soviet of Nationalities , was one of the two chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, elected on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot in accordance with the principles of Soviet democracy...
to double the Soviet of the Union
Soviet of the Union
Soviet of the Union , was one of the two chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, elected on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot in accordance with the principles of Soviet democracy, and with the rule that there be one deputy for...
inside the supreme legislative body; his arguments in favor of reducing the number of representatives of Russian SFSR and barring the total number of envoys from any republic at one fifth of the total were dismissed after being criticized by Stalin.
Trotskyist opposition and ambassadorship
Left Opposition
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January...
and came into conflict with Stalin. Although declining, his influence in Ukraine was, according to political scientist John P. Willerton, one of Trotsky's main bases of support, alongside sections of the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
, a group of Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
leaders, and various officials involved in economic planning
Economy of the Soviet Union
The economy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was based on a system of state ownership of the means of production, collective farming, industrial manufacturing and centralized administrative planning...
. In early July 1923, after being isolated inside the Ukrainian leadership, he was removed from his Ukrainian post, replaced with Vlas Chubar
Vlas Chubar
Vlas Yakovlevich Chubar was a Ukrainian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician.-Early career:Chubar was born in Fedorovka, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire . He became a Marxist revolutionary early in life and joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor...
, and sent to London to negotiate a formal recognition of the Soviet regime by the British and French governments. Chubar, an ethnic Ukrainian
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
, came to represent Stalin's view on nationality issues in the region, officially defined as "nativization". In London, Rakovsky and his wife were joined by Elena Codreanu, whom they had adopted.
In 1924, as the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
minority cabinet came to power, Ramsay MacDonald
Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS was a British politician who was the first ever Labour Prime Minister, leading a minority government for two terms....
and Rakovsky negotiated de jure
De jure
De jure is an expression that means "concerning law", as contrasted with de facto, which means "concerning fact".De jure = 'Legally', De facto = 'In fact'....
recognition and agreed on possible future Anglo-Soviet treaty and a British loan for the Soviet Union. Negotiations were tested by the so-called Bankers' Memorandum, published by The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, which demanded that the Soviet Union abandon nationalization
Nationalization
Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...
s and return to private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
. Eventually, two treaties were signed, allowing for commerce to be normalized between the two countries, and reflecting Rakovsky's views that private complaints of creditors against the Soviet state were to be settled outside the conference. The scandal which erupted when the Zinoviev Letter
Zinoviev Letter
The "Zinoviev Letter" refers to a controversial document published by the British press in 1924, allegedly sent from the Communist International in Moscow to the Communist Party of Great Britain...
was publicized, rekindling suspicions against the Soviet government and provoking the fall of MacDonald's cabinet, brought an end to all further talks; during and after the incident, Rakovsky repeatedly cited evidence that the Letter was a forgery.
In parallel, he had begun negotiations with France's Raymond Poincaré
Raymond Poincaré
Raymond Poincaré was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France on five separate occasions and as President of France from 1913 to 1920. Poincaré was a conservative leader primarily committed to political and social stability...
, who aimed for a "solidarity of foreign creditors" in respect to the Soviet state, and who agreed to recognize the latter on October 28, 1924. One of his last tasks involved placing Soviet orders for machinery, textiles, and other commodities with British manufacturers: worth 75 million US$ on paper, these failed to attract attention after he announced that the Soviet government did not intend to pay in cash. According to the American magazine Time, Rakovsky also played a hand in motivating Stalin's decision to marginalize Comintern leader Zinoviev, by complaining that the latter's foreign policy was needlessly radical.
Rakovsky served as the Soviet ambassador to France between October 1925 and October 1927, replacing Leonid Krasin
Leonid Krasin
Leonid Borisovich Krasin July 1870, Kurgan – November 24, 1926) was a Russian and Soviet Bolshevik politician and diplomat.-Early years:Krasin was born in Kurgan, near Tobol'sk in Siberia. His father, Boris Ivanovich Krasin was the local chief of police...
. He did not take hold of his office until 50 days after his official appointment, refusing to be received at the Élysée Palace
Élysée Palace
The Élysée Palace is the official residence of the President of the French Republic, containing his office, and is where the Council of Ministers meets. It is located near the Champs-Élysées in Paris....
by French President Gaston Doumergue
Gaston Doumergue
Pierre-Paul-Henri-Gaston Doumergue was a French politician of the Third Republic.Doumergue came from a Protestant family. Beginning as a Radical, he turned more towards the political right in his old age. He served as Prime Minister from 9 December 1913 to 2 June 1914...
for as long as the state authorities would not allow The Internationale
The Internationale
The Internationale is a famous socialist, communist, social-democratic and anarchist anthem.The Internationale became the anthem of international socialism, and gained particular fame under the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1944, when it was that communist state's de facto central anthem...
(a revolutionary song which was at the time the Soviet national anthem
National anthem
A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.- History :Anthems rose to prominence...
) to be played on the occasion. Doumergeue resisted, and, in the end, Rakovsky was received to the sound of an improvised arrangement of bugles
Bugle (instrument)
The bugle is one of the simplest brass instruments, having no valves or other pitch-altering devices. All pitch control is done by varying the player's embouchure, since the bugle has no other mechanism for controlling pitch. Consequently, the bugle is limited to notes within the harmonic series...
, the more discreet part of which may have been based on The Internationale. Time described it as a "deafening blast".
His first task involved renewed negotiations with the cabinet of Aristide Briand
Aristide Briand
Aristide Briand was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and received the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.- Early life :...
(February 1926), during which he was confronted with the vocal campaign of creditors. Early results achieved in discussions with Anatole de Monzie
Anatole de Monzie
Anatole de Monzie was a French administrator, encyclopaedist , political figure and scholar. His father was a tax collector in Bazas, Gironde where Anatole - a name he disliked from an early age - was born in 1876...
were dismissed by the opposition rallied around Poincaré, and, after being revived by the short-lived cabinet of Édouard Herriot
Édouard Herriot
Édouard Marie Herriot was a French Radical politician of the Third Republic who served three times as Prime Minister and for many years as President of the Chamber of Deputies....
, talks ended without any result. Poincaré returned to power, and France remained committed to the Locarno Treaties
Locarno Treaties
The Locarno Treaties were seven agreements negotiated at Locarno, Switzerland, on 5 October – 16 October 1925 and formally signed in London on 3 December, in which the First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of central and Eastern Europe sought to secure the post-war...
(which had isolated the Soviet state on the international stage). Over the following year, Christian Rakovsky continued to attempt a détente
Détente
Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War...
with France, advertising Soviet concessions and speaking directly to the public.
During the same period, as tensions grew between Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and the Soviet government over the latter's support for a Mexican railway workers' strike, American agents reported that Rakovsky was instructed to threaten with publicizing correspondence between former President
President of Mexico
The President of the United Mexican States is the head of state and government of Mexico. Under the Constitution, the president is also the Supreme Commander of the Mexican armed forces...
Álvaro Obregón
Álvaro Obregón
General Álvaro Obregón Salido was the President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924. He was assassinated in 1928, shortly after winning election to another presidential term....
and Soviet authorities (which had occurred before diplomatic links were established). Since this could endanger Mexico's relations with the United States, President Plutarco Elías Calles
Plutarco Elías Calles
Plutarco Elías Calles was a Mexican general and politician. He was president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928, but he continued to be the de facto ruler from 1928–1935, a period known as the maximato...
chose to deescalate the conflict.
Together with his second wife, Rakovsky gave full approval to Max Eastman
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
's volume Since Lenin Died, which centered on heavy criticism of Soviet realities, and which they reviewed before it was published. He became acquainted with the former French Communist Party
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
member and anti-Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
journalist Boris Souvarine
Boris Souvarine
Boris Souvarine was an Imperial Russian-born French socialist, communist activist, essayist, and journalist.-Early years:...
, as well as with the Romanian writer Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati was a Romanian writer of French and Romanian expression, nicknamed The Maxim Gorky of the Balkans. Istrati was first noted for the depiction of one homosexual character in his work.-Early life:...
, who had observed Rakovsky's career ever since his presence in Romania. He also maintained friendly contacts with Marcel Pauker
Marcel Pauker
Marcel Pauker was a Romanian communist militant and husband of the future Romanian Communist leader Ana Pauker....
, a prominent but independent-minded member of the Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
, whose activities were denounced by the Comintern in 1930.
Rakovsky was eventually declared a persona non grata
Persona non grata
Persona non grata , literally meaning "an unwelcome person", is a legal term used in diplomacy that indicates a proscription against a person entering the country...
in France and recalled after signing the Declaration of the Opposition, a Trotskyist
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...
platform deemed unfriendly by the French government (it stressed support for revolutions and mutinies
Mutiny
Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...
in all capitalist countries). According to Time, France's decision was tacitly welcomed by Foreign Affairs Commissar Georgy Chicherin
Georgy Chicherin
Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin was a Marxist revolutionary and a Soviet politician. He served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the Soviet government from March 1918 to 1930.-Childhood and early career:...
, due to Rakovsky's political opinions. Rakovsky left without presenting his letter of recall to President Doumergue, although he was scheduled for a meeting at the Élysée. He was initially scheduled to serve as Ambassador to Japan. On his trip back to the Soviet state, he was joined by Istrati, who, partly owing to his witnessing of the Rakovsky's downfall, soon became a noted opponent of Stalinism.
Persecution and internal exile
In December, Rakovsky and Lev KamenevLev Kamenev
Lev Borisovich Kamenev , born Rozenfeld , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was briefly head of state of the new republic in 1917, and from 1923-24 the acting Premier in the last year of Lenin's life....
held brief speeches in front of the Soviet Communist Party's Fifteenth Congress. The former was interrupted fifty-seven times by his opponents—Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
, Martemyan Ryutin
Martemyan Ryutin
Martemyan Nikitich Ryutin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and a political functionary of the Russian Communist Party. Ryutin is best remembered as the leader of a pro-peasant political faction organized against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the early 1930s and as the primary author of a 200...
, and Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a Soviet politician and administrator and one of the main associates of Joseph Stalin.-Early life:Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire...
. Although, unlike Rakovsky, he used the occasion to appeal for reconciliation, Kamenev was himself interrupted twenty-four times by the same group.
After that moment, although branded "enemy of the people
Enemy 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 ,...
", Rakovsky was still occasionally allowed to speak in public (notably, together with Kamenev and Karl Radek
Karl Radek
Karl Bernhardovic Radek was a socialist active in the Polish and German movements before World War I and an international Communist leader after the Russian Revolution....
, to the Moscow Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
), and continued to criticize Stalin's leadership as "bureaucratic socialism" (see Bureaucratic collectivism
Bureaucratic collectivism
Bureaucratic collectivism is a theory of class society. It is used by some Trotskyists to describe the nature of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and other similar states in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere .- Theory :...
) and "social fascism". With Nikolai Krestinsky
Nikolai Krestinsky
Nikolay Nikolayevich Krestinsky was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician.-Origins:Krestinsky was born in the town of Mogilev, in what is now Mahilyow Voblast of Belarus. According to Russian archivist A. B. Roginsky, Krestinsky was of ethnic Russian origin...
(who split with the group soon afterwards) and Kamenev, he attempted to organize a substantial opposition, visiting Ukraine for this purpose, hosting public meetings and printing manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
s addressed to the workers in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, Kharkiv
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
, Mykolaiv
Mykolaiv
Mykolaiv , also known as Nikolayev , is a city in southern Ukraine, administrative center of the Mykolaiv Oblast. Mykolaiv is the main ship building center of the Black Sea, and, arguably, the whole Eastern Europe.-Name of city:...
, 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,...
, Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk formerly Yekaterinoslav is Ukraine's third largest city with one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central region of the country...
, Kherson
Kherson
Kherson is a city in southern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Kherson Oblast , and is designated as its own separate raion within the oblast. Kherson is an important port on the Black Sea and Dnieper River, and the home of a major ship-building industry...
, and Zaporizhia
Zaporizhia
Zaporizhia or Zaporozhye [formerly Alexandrovsk ] is a city in southeastern Ukraine, situated on the banks of the Dnieper River. It is the administrative center of the Zaporizhia Oblast...
(he was assisted by, among others, Yuri Kotsubinsky). He was persistently heckled
Heckler
A heckler is a person who harass and try to disconcert others with questions, challenges, or gibes.Hecklers are often known to shout disparaging comments at a performance or event, or interrupts set-piece speeches, for example at a political meeting, with intent to disturb its performers or...
during public appearances, and his supporters were beaten up by the Militsiya
Militsiya
Militsiya or militia is used as an official name of the civilian police in several former communist states, despite its original military connotation...
.
In November 1927, after receiving news that Adolph Joffe
Adolph Joffe
Adolph Abramovich Joffe was a Communist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and a Soviet diplomat of Karaim descent.-Revolutionary career:...
had committed suicide, he assigned Ukrainian campaigning to Voja Vujović, and returned to Moscow. Following the defeat of the Left Opposition in November–December 1927, Rakovsky was ousted from the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, the Central Committee
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
, and eventually from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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...
. He was exiled, first to Astrakhan
Astrakhan
Astrakhan is a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the left bank of the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea at an altitude of below the sea level. Population:...
, 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...
, and then to Barnaul
Barnaul
-Russian Empire:Barnaul was one of the earlier cities established in Siberia. Originally chosen for its proximity to the mineral-rich Altai Mountains and its location on a major river, the site was founded by the wealthy Demidov family in the 1730s. In addition to the copper which had originally...
. Shortly before the decision, he commented to his visitor, French writer Pierre Naville
Pierre Naville
Pierre Naville was a French Surrealist writer and sociologist. He was a prominent member of the 'Investigating Sex' group of Surrealist thinkers.In politics, he was a Communist and then a Trotskyist, before joining the PSU...
: "The French expelled me from Paris for having signed a declaration of the opposition. Stalin expelled me from the [Foreign Affairs Commissariat] for having signed the same declaration. But in both cases they let me keep the jacket".
While in Astrakhan, Rakovsky was employed by the Regional Planning Committee
Economy of the Soviet Union
The economy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was based on a system of state ownership of the means of production, collective farming, industrial manufacturing and centralized administrative planning...
(Gubplan). He was also active as a writer, starting work on a volume detailing the sources of Utopian socialism
Utopian socialism
Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists and were looked on favorably...
and the thought of Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon was a French early socialist theorist whose thought influenced the foundations of various 19th century philosophies; perhaps most notably Marxism, positivism and the discipline of sociology...
. Rakovsky remained involved in Trotskyist politics, was contacted by Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati was a Romanian writer of French and Romanian expression, nicknamed The Maxim Gorky of the Balkans. Istrati was first noted for the depiction of one homosexual character in his work.-Early life:...
and the Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
writer Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis was a Greek writer and philosopher, celebrated for his novel Zorba the Greek, considered his magnum opus...
, and corresponded with Trotsky (who had himself been exiled to Almaty
Almaty
Almaty , also known by its former names Verny and Alma-Ata , is the former capital of Kazakhstan and the nation's largest city, with a population of 1,348,500...
). Most of his writings were confiscated by the State Political Directorate
State Political Directorate
The State Political Directorate was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1934...
, but the letter on Soviet "bureaucratism" he addressed to Nikolai Valentinov
Nikolai Valentinov
Nikolai Valentinov was a Russian socialist, journalist, philosopher and economist, a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party . He was an exponent of empirio-criticism. He was also known as Nikolai Valentinov-Volski and, later, as E...
survived, and became notorious as a critique of Stalinism (under the title "Professional Dangers" of Power). Mistrusting Stalin's new leftist policies, he foresaw the renewed moves against the Left Opposition (inaugurated by Trotsky's 1929 expulsion).
As his health deteriorated, he was allowed to move to Saratov upon requests addressed by Krestinsky to Kaganovich, the Secretary of the Central Committee. He was visited by Louis Fischer
Louis Fischer
Louis Fischer was a Jewish-American journalist. Among his works were a contribution to the ex-Communist treatise The God that Failed, The Life of Lenin, which won a 1965 National Book Award, as well as a biography of Mahatma Gandhi entitled The Life of Mahatma Gandhi...
, who recorded Rakovsky's determination not to submit to Stalin (contrasting his option with those of Radek, Yevgeni Preobrazhensky
Yevgeni Preobrazhensky
Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky was an Old Bolshevik, an economist and a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik faction and, its successor, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.-Life:...
, Alexander Beloborodov and Ivar Smilga
Ivar Smilga
Ivar Tenisovich Smilga , was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader in, and member of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union.Ivar was born around Valmiera in the Governorate of Livonia , as the son of a forester killed by Russian Government troops in 1906 during the last stage of the Russian...
). Instead, Rakovsky incited further resistance to Stalinism, and issued a declaration of the united opposition; following this, he was sent to Barnaul, which he called a "hole in the barren cold ground". In another critical letter to the Party leadership (April 1930), he called for, among other things, the restoration of civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
, a reduction in the party apparatus, the return of Trotsky, and an end to forced collectivization.
Little is known of Rakovsky's life between that moment and July 1932, the moment when he was allowed a medical leave. Towards the end of the same year, Trotsky was informed that he had attempted to flee the Soviet Union, and, in March 1933, it was announced that he had been deported to Yakutia. Answering Trotsky's request, the French mathematician and Trotskyist Jean Van Heijenoort
Jean Van Heijenoort
Jean Louis Maxime van Heijenoort was a pioneer historian of mathematical logic. He was also a personal secretary to Leon Trotsky from 1932 to 1939, and from then until 1947, an American Trotskyist activist.-Life:Van Heijenoort was born in Creil, France...
, together with his fellow activist Pierre Frank
Pierre Frank
Pierre Frank was a French Trotskyist leader. He served on the secretariat of the Fourth International from 1948 to 1979....
, unsuccessfully called on the influential Soviet author Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
to intervene in favor of Christian Rakovsky, and boarded the ship he was traveling on near Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
. According to Heijenoort, they only managed to meet Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, who reportedly told them that his father was indisposed, but promised to pass on their request. Researcher Tova Yedlin proposed that the problem was caused by Gorky's distress over having recently separated from his mistress Moura Budberg
Moura Budberg
Moura Zakrevskaya, variously Countess Benckendorff and Baroness Budberg was the daughter of Ignaty Platonovitch Zakrevsky , a Russian nobleman. She first married Count Johann von Benckendorff, a high-ranking Czarist diplomat, in 1911...
, as well as to the writer's close surveillance by OGPU
State Political Directorate
The State Political Directorate was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1934...
agents.
Submission to Stalin and the Show Trial
Rakovsky was one of the last leading Trotskyists to break with Trotsky and surrender to Stalin. Alarmed by Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's rise to power in Germany and under intense pressure from Stalin, he announced his submission to the Party through a telegram he sent Izvestia
Izvestia
Izvestia is a long-running high-circulation daily newspaper in Russia. The word "izvestiya" in Russian means "delivered messages", derived from the verb izveshchat . In the context of newspapers it is usually translated as "news" or "reports".-Origin:The newspaper began as the News of the...
(February 23, 1934). While Rakovsky was allowed to return to Moscow, Trotsky declared the dissociation statement to be "purely formal".
Rakovsky formally "admitted his mistakes" in April 1934 (his letter to the Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
, titled There Should Be No Mercy, depicted Trotsky and his supporters as "agents of the German Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
"). He was appointed to high office in the Commissariat for Health and allowed to return to Moscow, also serving as Soviet ambassador to Japan in 1935.
Cited in allegations involving the killing of Sergey Kirov
Sergey Kirov
Sergei Mironovich Kirov , born Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov, was a prominent early Bolshevik leader in the Soviet Union. Kirov rose through the Communist Party ranks to become head of the Party organization in Leningrad...
, Rakovsky was arrested in autumn 1937, during 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...
; according to Trotsky, he was forced to wait without food or rest for 18 hours, during which time his house was being searched. He was put on trial in March 1938 with Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
, Alexei Rykov
Alexei Rykov
Aleksei Ivanovich Rykov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician most prominent as Premier of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1924–29 and 1924–30 respectively....
, Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda , born Enokh Gershevich Ieguda , was a Soviet state security official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's Stalin-era security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936...
, Nikolai Krestinsky
Nikolai Krestinsky
Nikolay Nikolayevich Krestinsky was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician.-Origins:Krestinsky was born in the town of Mogilev, in what is now Mahilyow Voblast of Belarus. According to Russian archivist A. B. Roginsky, Krestinsky was of ethnic Russian origin...
and other Old Bolsheviks, on charges of conspiring with Trotsky to overthrow Stalin, the third Moscow 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...
—known as the Trial of the Twenty One
Trial of the Twenty One
The Trial of the Twenty-One was the last of the Moscow Trials, show trials of prominent Bolsheviks, including the Old Bolsheviks. The Trial of the Twenty-One took place in Moscow in March 1938, towards the end of Stalin's Great Purge.-The Trial:...
. In his forced confession
Forced confession
A forced confession is a confession obtained by a suspect or a prisoner under means of torture, enhanced interrogation technique or duress.Depending on the level of coercion used, a forced confession may or may not be valid in revealing the truth...
to Andrey Vyshinsky
Andrey Vyshinsky
Andrey Januaryevich Vyshinsky – 22 November 1954) was a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat.He is known as a state prosecutor of Joseph Stalin's Moscow trials and in the Nuremberg trials. He was the Soviet Foreign Minister from 1949 to 1953, after having served as Deputy Foreign...
, he admitted to all the charges—including having been a spy (for Japan) and a landowner. He made attempts to point out that his revenue had been used to support socialism, and that he had a grasp of "revolutionary practices", but was attacked by Vyshinsky, who persistently referred to Rakovsky as "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...
". In his final statement, Rakovsky argued: "from my young days I honestly, truthfully and devotedly performed my duty as a soldier of the cause of the emancipation of labor. After this bright period a dark period set in, the period of my criminal deeds".
Unlike most of his co-defendants, who were immediately executed, he was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor. After the Nazi
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
), Rakovsky was shot on Stalin's orders outside Oryol
Oryol
Oryol or Orel is a city and the administrative center of Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River, approximately south-southwest of Moscow...
—along with Olga Kameneva
Olga Kameneva
Olga Davidovna Kameneva was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician. She was the sister of Leon Trotsky and the first wife of Lev Kamenev.-Childhood and Revolutionary Career :...
, Maria Spiridonova
Maria Spiridonova
Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova was a figure in Russian revolutionary circles at the beginning of the 20th century.- Biography :She joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party during her training to become a nurse....
and over 150 other political prisoners. This execution was one of the many massacres of prisoners
NKVD massacres of prisoners
The NKVD prisoner massacres were a series of mass executions committed by the Soviet NKVD against prisoners in Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Bessarabia and other parts of the Soviet Union from which the Red Army was withdrawing after the German invasion in 1941...
committed by 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....
in 1941.
Legacy and rehabilitation
Rakovsky's second wife, Alexandrina Alexandrescu, was herself arrested, and is known to have been held in Butyrka prisonButyrka prison
Butyrka prison was the central transit prison in pre-Revolutionary Russia, located in Moscow.The first references to Butyrka prison may be traced back to the 17th century. The present prison building was erected in 1879 near the Butyrsk gate on the site of a prison-fortress which had been built...
, where she suffered a series of heart attacks
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
. His adoptive daughter, Elena Codreanu-Racovski, was expelled from her job as secretary of the Mossoviet Theater, and deported to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
. She returned to Moscow in the 1950s, after Stalin's death, and settled in Communist Romania
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
after 1975, rejoining her brother, the biologist and academic Radu Codreanu. She later authored a memoir which included recollections of her father (it was published in Romanian as De-a lungul şi de-a latul secolului, "The Length and Breadth of the Century"). It was compiled from personal notes and dialogs with physician and former communist militant G. Brătescu, who noted that, probably owing to suspicions she had in respect to the Romanian communist regime, Elena Codreanu refused to talk about Rakovsky's trial and her own persecution. Rakovsky's nephew Boris Stefanov
Boris Stefanov
Boris Stefanov was a Romanian communist politician, who served as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1936 to 1940.-Early life and activism:...
, whom he encouraged to join the Romanian socialist movement before World War I, later became a general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
, before being himself purged in 1940.
By 1932, Rakovsky's name was frequently invoked in the heated debate involving Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati was a Romanian writer of French and Romanian expression, nicknamed The Maxim Gorky of the Balkans. Istrati was first noted for the depiction of one homosexual character in his work.-Early life:...
and his political adversaries. Istrati, having returned to Romania in disillusion over Soviet realities, was initially attacked in the local far right newspapers Curentul and Universul
Universul
Universul was a mass-circulation newspaper in Romania. It existed from 1884 to 1953, and was run by Stelian Popescu from 1914 to 1943 ....
; writing for the former, Pamfil Şeicaru defined Istrati as "the servant of Racovski". Having published To the Other Flame, in which he exposed Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
, he consequently became the target of intense criticism and allegations from various pro-Soviet writers, led by the Frenchman Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party.-Life:...
. During this period, the Romanian communist writer Alexandru Sahia
Alexandru Sahia
Alexandru Sahia was a Romanian communist journalist and short story author.-Early life:...
speculated, among other things, that Istrati had been in the pay of Rakovsky and Trotsky for a sizable part of his life.
Based on his independent opinions and, in part, on his friendship with Rakovsky, Marcel Pauker
Marcel Pauker
Marcel Pauker was a Romanian communist militant and husband of the future Romanian Communist leader Ana Pauker....
was disavowed by the Romanian and Soviet communist parties, and was himself 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...
in 1938. At various intervals between 1930 and 1952, his wife, the Romanian communist leader Ana Pauker
Ana Pauker
Ana Pauker was a Romanian communist leader and served as the country's foreign minister in the late 1940s and early 1950s...
, faced pressures to denounce her husband. She initially refused to criticize him for anything other than his association with Rakovsky, and never admitted that Marcel Pauker had been guilty of all the charges brought against him.
The influential Hungarian-born author Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
, himself a former communist, based Rubashov, the main character in his 1940 novel Darkness at Noon
Darkness at Noon
Darkness at Noon is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940...
, on victims of the Moscow Trials
Moscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
; according to George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, Rakovsky's fate was a possible direct influence: "Rubashov might be called Trotsky, Bukharin, Rakovsky or some other relatively civilised figure among the Old Bolsheviks. If one writes about the Moscow trials one must answer the question, «Why did the accused confess?» and which answer one makes is a political decision. Koestler answers, in effect, «Because these people had been rotted by the Revolution which they served», and in doing so he comes near to claiming that revolutions are of their nature bad".
In 1988, during 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...
, the Soviet government cleared Rakovsky and his co-defendants of all charges. His rehabilitation
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...
came in February, coinciding with that of Bukharin, as well as with those of Ukrainian official and former People's Commissar for Agriculture Mikhail Alexandrovich Chernov
Mikhail Alexandrovich Chernov
Mikhail Alexandrovich Chernov was a Russian Bolshevik politician who was executed during the Great Purge.He was born in Vichuga, now in Ivanovo Oblast, to a family of weavers. In 1909 he became a Menshevik and graduated from the Gymnasium in Kostroma in 1911. Between 1913 - 1917 he attended Moscow...
, former People's Commissar for Foreign Trade Arkady Rozengolts, and other five officials. Bukharin, Rakovsky, Rozengolts, and Chernov were posthumously reinstated to the Communist Party on June 21, 1988. His works were given imprimatur
Imprimatur
An imprimatur is, in the proper sense, a declaration authorizing publication of a book. The term is also applied loosely to any mark of approval or endorsement.-Catholic Church:...
, while a favorable biography was published by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Science of Ukraine
The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is the highest government research body in Ukraine and one of the six state academies. Its presidium is located at 57 Volodymyr Street, across the street from the Building of Pedagogical Museum where used to preside the Central Rada during the...
(late 1988).