Vissarion Lominadze
Encyclopedia
Vissarion Vissarionovich Lominadze ( – 1935), known as Beso , was a Georgian
Bolshevik
and Soviet politician.
Lominadze was born in Kutaisi
, Georgia (then part of Imperial Russia) into the family of a teacher. Beginning in 1913 he participated in student Social Democratic organizations in Kutaisi and St. Petersburg, and from April 1917 he worked in the military organization of the Petrograd branch of the Bolshevik party. In August he became secretary of the Party Committee of Kutaisi. From 1918 to 1919 he was chairman of the Tbilisi
Party Committee, and from 1919 to 1920 he was a member of the Baku
Committee and a member of the Presidium of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan
. From 1920 to 1921 he was a member of the Bureau of the Oryol
regional committee of the party, and from 1921 to 1922 a party organizer in the Vyborg district
of Petrograd, where he was involved in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion
.
In October 1922 Lominadze was elected First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party
, a post he held until August 1924. Ronald Grigor Suny
writes: "An old friend of Stalin's and the choice of the Orgburo
in Moscow (but not the local party), Lominadze was nevertheless somewhat above the infighting that was tearing the KPG
apart." From 1925 to 1929 he worked in the Comintern
as well as being Secretary of the Board of the Communist Youth International from 1925 to 1926. In July 1927 the Comintern sent him to China to urge the Chinese Communist Party to adopt a more militant policy and find a Kuomintang
element willing to allow a Communist Party fraction to operate within the KMT; he appears to have been close to Qu Qiubai
, whom he chose to lead the Chinese party before the August 7 Emergency conference at which many former leaders were expelled "in order to secure a new CCP leadership that would embrace Stalin's policies." Before Lominadze returned to Moscow in December 1927, Stalin sent out a young German named Heinz Neumann to assist him and "cajole the CCP into organizing an urban uprising in time for the 15th Party Congress of the CPSU." Although the disastrous Guangzhou Uprising
was basically Neumann's doing, Stalin blamed both him and Lominadze; as he had previously, "he refused to take any responsibility for the failure of the program he had initiated, but held the miscalculation of the comrades on the spot responsible for the failure of the uprising." Furthermore, along with his Komsomol associates Shatskin and Sten, Lominadze was openly critical of party policy in 1929, and was demoted to head of the Nizhny Novgorod
agitprop
division of the Provincial Committee of the party.
In 1930, however, in "a kind of rehabilitation," he returned to Georgia as First Secretary of the Transcaucasus Regional Committee of the party (Zakkraikom) as part of the party reorganization consequent on Stalin's acknowledgment of the excesses of collectivization ("Dizzy with Success"). Shortly after his arrival in Tbilisi, Lominadze made several speeches criticizing the way collectivization had been carried out in the region, telling the Seventh Congress of the Georgian party in May 1930, "Here in the Transcaucasian village the material productive base which would allow us to undertake such a tempo of collectivization as in the North Caucasus, Lower Volga, or Ukraine does not exist." A resolution was then adopted calling for a milder line on the kulaks; while Lominadze criticized forced, rapid collectivization, he was careful not to question the general line of the party.
At the Sixteenth Party Congress in June-July 1930, however, Lominadze "spoke forcefully, criticizing the positions of other Communists, and when he finished, his speech was one of the few not greeted by applause." In the same year, he and the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, S.I. Syrtsov, met to discuss political matters, agreeing that industrialization was being pushed too rapidly and the peasantry was under excessive pressure; this was considered the creation of a "left-right bloc," and he was dismissed from his post and removed from the Central Committee on December 1, 1930.
From 1931 to 1932 he was head of the research sector of the People's Commissariat for Supplies (Narkomsnab) of the USSR. From 1932 to 1933 he was party organizer of a machine-building plant in Moscow
. From August 1933, he was Secretary of the Magnitogorsk
City Committee of the party, a prestigious post he was awarded (along with the Order of Lenin) thanks to his friendship with Sergo Ordzhonikidze.
In 1935, summoned to Chelyabinsk under threat of arrest as part of the preparation for the 1936 trial of the "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center," he committed suicide, shooting himself in an automobile and leaving a note expressing his devotion to the party and asking Ordzonikidze to look after his family, a request the latter honored: "As long as he was alive, Lominadze's widow received a pension for her husband, and by Council of People's Commissars decree, Lominadze's son, named Sergo after Ordzonikidze, was granted a sizable monetary benefit.... immediately after Ordzonikidze's death, Lominadze's wife was deprived of her pension, and not much later she was arrested."
John Scott, who knew him in Magnitogorsk, left a vivid description of him:
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
and Soviet politician.
Lominadze was born in Kutaisi
Kutaisi
Kutaisi is Georgia's second largest city and the capital of the western region of Imereti. It is 221 km to the west of Tbilisi.-Geography:...
, Georgia (then part of Imperial Russia) into the family of a teacher. Beginning in 1913 he participated in student Social Democratic organizations in Kutaisi and St. Petersburg, and from April 1917 he worked in the military organization of the Petrograd branch of the Bolshevik party. In August he became secretary of the Party Committee of Kutaisi. From 1918 to 1919 he was chairman of the Tbilisi
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
Party Committee, and from 1919 to 1920 he was a member of the Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
Committee and a member of the Presidium of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
. From 1920 to 1921 he was a member of the Bureau of the 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...
regional committee of the party, and from 1921 to 1922 a party organizer in the Vyborg district
Vyborgsky District, Saint Petersburg
Vyborgsky District, Saint Petersburg is an administrative and municipal district , one of the 18 in Saint Petersburg, Russia....
of Petrograd, where he was involved in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion
Kronstadt rebellion
The Kronstadt rebellion was one of many major unsuccessful left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War...
.
In October 1922 Lominadze was elected First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party
First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party
The First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party was the leading position in the Georgian Communist party during the Soviet era. Its leaders were responsible for many of the affairs in Georgia and were considered the leader of the Georgian SSR...
, a post he held until August 1924. Ronald Grigor Suny
Ronald Grigor Suny
Ronald Grigor Suny is currently director of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies and the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan, as well as Emeritus Professor of political science and history at the University of Chicago...
writes: "An old friend of Stalin's and the choice of the Orgburo
Orgburo
The Orgburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union existed from 1919–52, until the 19th Congress, when the Orgburo was abolished and its functions were transferred to the enlarged Secretariat....
in Moscow (but not the local party), Lominadze was nevertheless somewhat above the infighting that was tearing the KPG
Georgian Communist party
Georgia was incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic after 25 February 1921 when the Red Army entered its capital Tbilisi and installed a communist government led by Georgian Bolshevik Filipp Makharadze. After the 1924 August Uprising in Georgia the country was...
apart." From 1925 to 1929 he worked in 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...
as well as being Secretary of the Board of the Communist Youth International from 1925 to 1926. In July 1927 the Comintern sent him to China to urge the Chinese Communist Party to adopt a more militant policy and find a Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
element willing to allow a Communist Party fraction to operate within the KMT; he appears to have been close to Qu Qiubai
Qu Qiubai
Qu Qiubai was born in Changzhou, Jiangsu, China. He was a leader of the Communist Party of China in the late 1920s.-Early life:...
, whom he chose to lead the Chinese party before the August 7 Emergency conference at which many former leaders were expelled "in order to secure a new CCP leadership that would embrace Stalin's policies." Before Lominadze returned to Moscow in December 1927, Stalin sent out a young German named Heinz Neumann to assist him and "cajole the CCP into organizing an urban uprising in time for the 15th Party Congress of the CPSU." Although the disastrous Guangzhou Uprising
Guangzhou Uprising
The Guangzhou Uprising of 1927 was a failed communist uprising in the city of Guangzhou in southern China.On December 11 1927, red guard citizens, directed by communist political leaders, took over Guangzhou . The uprising occurred despite the strong objections of communist military commanders...
was basically Neumann's doing, Stalin blamed both him and Lominadze; as he had previously, "he refused to take any responsibility for the failure of the program he had initiated, but held the miscalculation of the comrades on the spot responsible for the failure of the uprising." Furthermore, along with his Komsomol associates Shatskin and Sten, Lominadze was openly critical of party policy in 1929, and was demoted to head of the Nizhny Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod , colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is, with the population of 1,250,615, the fifth largest city in Russia, ranking after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg...
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....
division of the Provincial Committee of the party.
In 1930, however, in "a kind of rehabilitation," he returned to Georgia as First Secretary of the Transcaucasus Regional Committee of the party (Zakkraikom) as part of the party reorganization consequent on Stalin's acknowledgment of the excesses of collectivization ("Dizzy with Success"). Shortly after his arrival in Tbilisi, Lominadze made several speeches criticizing the way collectivization had been carried out in the region, telling the Seventh Congress of the Georgian party in May 1930, "Here in the Transcaucasian village the material productive base which would allow us to undertake such a tempo of collectivization as in the North Caucasus, Lower Volga, or Ukraine does not exist." A resolution was then adopted calling for a milder line on the kulaks; while Lominadze criticized forced, rapid collectivization, he was careful not to question the general line of the party.
At the Sixteenth Party Congress in June-July 1930, however, Lominadze "spoke forcefully, criticizing the positions of other Communists, and when he finished, his speech was one of the few not greeted by applause." In the same year, he and the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, S.I. Syrtsov, met to discuss political matters, agreeing that industrialization was being pushed too rapidly and the peasantry was under excessive pressure; this was considered the creation of a "left-right bloc," and he was dismissed from his post and removed from the Central Committee on December 1, 1930.
From 1931 to 1932 he was head of the research sector of the People's Commissariat for Supplies (Narkomsnab) of the USSR. From 1932 to 1933 he was party organizer of a machine-building plant in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. From August 1933, he was Secretary of the Magnitogorsk
Magnitogorsk
Magnitogorsk is a mining and industrial city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the eastern side of the extreme southern extent of the Ural Mountains by the Ural River. Population: 418,545 ;...
City Committee of the party, a prestigious post he was awarded (along with the Order of Lenin) thanks to his friendship with Sergo Ordzhonikidze.
In 1935, summoned to Chelyabinsk under threat of arrest as part of the preparation for the 1936 trial of the "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center," he committed suicide, shooting himself in an automobile and leaving a note expressing his devotion to the party and asking Ordzonikidze to look after his family, a request the latter honored: "As long as he was alive, Lominadze's widow received a pension for her husband, and by Council of People's Commissars decree, Lominadze's son, named Sergo after Ordzonikidze, was granted a sizable monetary benefit.... immediately after Ordzonikidze's death, Lominadze's wife was deprived of her pension, and not much later she was arrested."
John Scott, who knew him in Magnitogorsk, left a vivid description of him:
Lominadze, former head of the Young Communist International, was an enormous Georgian, whose huge body was covered with rolls of fat. He was very shortsighted and squinted continually. His biography was an interesting one. He had done underground Communist work in Germany, had helped to organize political strikes in Canton in 1927, where, according to his own words, he spent the best days of his life. Returned to Moscow after the fall of the Canton Commune he became leader of the YCI (Young Communist International), which position he held until 1930. At this time he developed deviations.... Lominadze, Georgian though he was, had been in many countries and was a thoroughly cultured person. He knew German literature well, was a fine critic, and something of a writer. He had absorbed too much of Western European bourgeois civilization to be able to witness the ruthlessness and cold, colorless dogmatism of Stalin's leadership without protest.