Dzerzhinsky Felix Edmundovich (born August 30 (September 11) 1877 - death July 20, 1926) - Professional revolutionary, one of the leaders of the Bolshevik party, head of a number of People's Commissariats. Organizer of the "red terror", founder of the Cheka.
Social Democrat since 1895. He spent 11 years in prisons. 1917 - a member of the Moscow Council, a participant in the Democratic Conference, a delegate to the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b), I and II All-Russian Congresses of Soviets of the RSD. Chairman of the Cheka-GPU-OGPU. 1921-1924 - People's Commissar of Railways, in 1924-1926. Chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR.
The revolutionary died in Moscow on July 20, 1926 of a heart attack during a meeting of the Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of the CPSU (b), after a speech in which he spoke out against the opposition and a departure from the policy of the party majority. He was buried in Moscow on Red Square.
Origin. early years
Dzerzhinsky Felix Edmundovich - was born in 1877 in the family estate of Dzerzhinovo's father in the Oshmyany district of the Vilna province in the family of a small landowner - a polonized Lithuanian, a gymnasium teacher. On the eve of giving birth, his mother fell into the cellar, and the baby was born prematurely. Felix received his education within the walls of the Vilna gymnasium. At first, the future "iron Felix", a zealous Catholic, dreams of becoming a priest, but in the 7th grade of the gymnasium, in 1895, he joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party.
Before the October Revolution
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Conducted propaganda in the circles of craft and factory students. 1897 - arrested on a denunciation and imprisoned in the Kovno prison, where he was for about a year. 1898 - was exiled for three years under police supervision to the Vyatka province (Nolinsk). There he enters a printmaker at a makhorka factory and begins to conduct propaganda among the workers. For this he was exiled 500 versts north of Nolinsk to the village of Kai, from where he escaped by boat in August 1899 and made his way to Vilno.
He was a supporter of the entry of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party into the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and a follower of Rosa Luxemburg on the national question. 1900 - took part in the first congress of the Social Democracy of the Kingdoms of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPL).
Extreme measures
1904 - Dzerzhinsky tried to detonate explosives at an officers' meeting in the city of Novo-Alexandria, hoping that the mass murder of Russian officers would provoke unrest. Did not work out. His partner got scared at the last moment, and the bomb didn't go off. According to the testimonies of contemporaries-revolutionaries, Felix mercilessly killed anyone who fell suspicious of having links with the police. He was arrested six times, but for lack of evidence, he was released. They could not have been, since Felix's associates quickly eliminated the witnesses of the massacres. If the prosecutor had any questions for the revolutionary, then after the threat of the murder of the children, the servants of the Themis closed the case.
After the October Revolution
During the October Revolution in Petrograd, Felix Edmundovich was responsible for guarding the building of the Smolny Institute - the headquarters of the Bolsheviks. Following the instructions of Leon Trotsky, he commanded the capture of the Main Post Office and the Telegraph, took part in the defeat of General Petr Nikolaevich Krasnov.
Chairman of the Cheka
After the October Revolution of 1917, the greatest threat to the Bolshevik government was posed by underground military organizations of white officers, sabotage of old tsarist officials, banditry, rampant anarchy, and drunken pogroms. Along with this, aggressive actions of the so-called "allies" began to emerge more and more often: the external front was already evident.
1917, December - The Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR decided to create an All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution. The Cheka became the organ of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." The organization included only 23 "Chekists" under the leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky, who defended the new government of the Bolsheviks from the actions of the counter-revolution.
Dzerzhinsky kept repeating - "The right to shoot for the Cheka is extremely important." There were executions without preliminary investigation and trial, reprisals against civilians and people who were accidentally caught - all in defense of the revolution. As Dzerzhinsky said:
“The Cheka is not a court, the Cheka is the defense of the revolution. The Cheka must defend the revolution and defeat the enemy, even if its sword accidentally falls on the heads of the innocent."
Red terror
1918 - Felix Dzerzhinsky was in disgrace. This happened after the revolt of the Left Social Revolutionaries in Moscow, when the structures of the Cheka were unable to resist the coup. 1918, July 7 - Felix Edmundovich was removed from office, but already on August 22, 1918 he was reinstated.
Just a few days after the return of the chief "Chekist" to his post, two terrorist attacks took place at once - in Petrograd, Socialist-Revolutionary Leonid Kannegiser killed the head of the Petrograd Cheka Moisey Uritsky, and in Moscow, Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan seriously wounded Lenin.
The response was followed by what would later be called the "Red Terror". From now on, "Iron Felix" will act decisively and brutally. According to various estimates, the structures of the Cheka, under the vigilant supervision of their boss, will destroy from 50 thousand to 140 thousand people by verdicts of revolutionary tribunals and extrajudicial meetings. Almost all of the Romanovs who remained in Russia were among the victims of the chief "chekist".
Contemporaries about Dzerzhinsky
The memories of his contemporaries speak of the impressions that Felix Edmundovich made as the chairman of the Cheka. N. Berdyaev, who was interrogated by the chief "Chekist", left his portrait: “He made the impression on me of a completely convinced and sincere person. I think that he was not a bad person and was not even a cruel person by nature. He was a fanatic. In his eyes, he gave the impression of a possessed person. There was something eerie about him … Once he wanted to become a Catholic monk, and he transferred his fanatical faith to communism."
From the memoirs of the British diplomat B. Lockhart, the deep-set eyes of Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky “burned with a cold fire of fanaticism. He never blinked. His eyelids seemed paralyzed."
In the service of the state
During the Civil War, Dzerzhinsky held various leadership positions: he was the head of the Cheka and military counterintelligence, the people's commissar of internal affairs, headed the Military Councils of the internal service troops and paramilitary guards, and was the chairman of the Main Committee of Labor. The party sent him to the fronts of the Civil War more than once: in Ukraine he fought the insurgency, maintained revolutionary order in Poland, and established Soviet power on the Crimean peninsula.
At the end of the Civil War, he was transferred to a leading position in industry - People's Commissar of Railways, and in 1924 he was appointed head of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the state. In this position, he supported the new economic policy of the party, engaged in attracting specialists with a tsarist education to work, and developed the country's metallurgy.
Personal life
Personal life for "Iron Felix" was always in the background. And yet, human passions and love were not alien to him. Felix's first love is Margarita Nikolaeva, whom he met while in his first exile in Nolinsk. She interested him with her revolutionary views.
However, this relationship did not have a happy ending - after escaping from exile, Felix for several years corresponded with a girl, whom in 1899 he proposed to stop with love correspondence, as he was carried away by another revolutionary, Julia Goldman. But this relationship was short-lived - Goldman suffered from tuberculosis and died in 1904 in a Swiss sanatorium. 1910 - the heart of a revolutionary was won by Sofia Mushkat, who was also an active revolutionary. A few months after they met, the lovers got married, but their happiness was short-lived - the first and only wife of the revolutionary was arrested and thrown into prison, where in 1911 she gave birth to her son Jan.
After Sofya Mushkat gave birth, she was sentenced to eternal exile in Siberia and deprived of all rights of the state. Until 1912 she lived in the village of Orlinga, from where she fled abroad with forged documents. The married couple Dzerzhinsky, after a long separation, met only 6 years later. In 1918, when Dzerzhinsky became the head of the Cheka, Sofia Sigismundovna had the opportunity to return to her homeland. After that, the family settled in the Kremlin, where they lived until the end of their days.
1) The funeral of F. E. Dzerzhinsky; 2) Bolshevik leaders carry the coffin with the body of Dzerzhinsky.
Interesting Facts
• Once a grenade flew into Dzerzhinsky's office on the Lubyanka, but he managed to hide in a large iron safe, for which he later received the nickname “Iron Felix”.
• Few people know that it was Dzerzhinsky who made a proposal to the Council of People's Commissars three times to abolish the “capital punishment”.
• In prison, Felix Edmundovich kept a diary. He wrote about how prisoners suffer, who "walk with their gaze directed to the sky, to green trees, not noticing beauty, not hearing the anthem of life, not feeling the rays of the sun." He wrote about the monstrous injustice that a person could be executed … Ten years later, when he was already chairman of the Cheka, such a characteristic episode happened to him.
At one of the sessions, Lenin wrote a note to "Iron Felix": "How many counter-revolutionaries do we have in our prisons?" Dzerzhinsky wrote in a response note: 1500. Lenin, as he usually did in such cases, put a cross on the note as a sign that he had read it and handed it back. Felix Edmundovich calmly left the room, and the next day it turned out that 1,500 people had been shot. The chief "chekist" interpreted the cross as a request to execute the prisoners. Wrong. Well, who doesn't happen to? None of the Bolsheviks, of course, attached any importance to this small misunderstanding.
Death
1926, July 20 - at the plenum of the Central Committee of the party, "Iron Felix" made a report that lasted about 2 hours. In a very emotional speech, he criticized the "Trotskyists" whose policies could lead to the disorganization of industry. On the same day, 49-year-old Dzerzhinsky Felix Edmundovich suffered a heart attack, which resulted in death. Dzerzhinsky was buried in Red Square in Moscow.