Evgenii Alexeyevich Preobrazhensky

Abstract

An Old Bolshevik and a distinguished Marxist theoretician, Preobrazhensky was born in 1886. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (which split into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions) in 1903 and became a professional revolutionary, being repeatedly arrested and twice subject to internal exile. He led the local party organization in the Urals during the October revolution. In 1918 he was a member of the Left Communist group within the party which opposed the treaty of Brest Litovsk. He played an active role in the Civil War. He was a full member of the Central Committee and also Central Committee Secretary in 1920–21. In 1921–2 he was critical of NEP (New Economic Policy). He was worried about concessions to the peasantry and their implications for rural stratification and Soviet power. A signatory to the Platform of the 46 (October 1923), he was an active oppositionist in 1924–7; he was expelled from the party in December 1927 and exiled to Siberia. Under the influence of Stalin’s move to the Left, he broke with the Opposition and in July 1929 accepted Stalin’s leadership. He attended the Seventeenth Party Congress (1934) where he praised Stalin and collectivization, denounced both himself and Trotsky, and advocated unity and unconditional acceptance of the party line and Stalin’s leadership. Arrested in 1935, he served as a prosecution witness at the trial of Zinoviev in 1936. Arrested again in 1936, he was not brought to a public trial, probably because of his refusal to confess to non-existent crimes. He was shot in 1937.