Boris Zakharovich Shumyatsky (; – 29 July 1938) was a Soviet politician, diplomat and the de facto executive producer for the Soviet film monopolies Soyuzkino and GUKF from 1930 to 1937. He was executed as a traitor in 1938, following a purge of the Soviet film industry, and much information about him was expunged from the public record as a consequence.

Early life and career

Shumyatsky's father worked as a bookbinder in St Petersburg. After the assassination of the Tsar, Alexander II, Jews were evicted from the Russian capital to the Pale of Settlement. Zakhar Shumyatsky pleaded to be allowed to continue living in a city, where he could continue working, and was deported Verkhneudinsk (now Ulan-Ude) in the vicinity of Lake Baikal in Russian Siberia, where Boris Zakharovich was born. The family was registered there as peasants. At the age of 12, Boris Shumyatsky worked on the railways in Chita, where he joined the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1903. The following year, he went to work at the Krasnoyarsk railway depot. During the 1905 revolution, Shumyatsky led a combat unit of about 800 who barricaded themselves in the railways workshops. and was there at the start of World War I, during which he was drafted into the Russian army, and organised a secret Bolshevik group within the Krasnoyarsk garrison. He is credited with being one of the Comintern agents behind the creation of the Mongolian People's Party, founded in Irkutsk in 1920, which went on to form the first communist government of Outer Mongolia. Mongolia's revolutionary hero, Suke Bator reputed adopted Shumyatsky as his twin brother.

Leyda's hostility to Shumyatsky resulted from what he saw as the systematic persecution of Eisenstein, who was prevented from completing a film for the entire time that Shumyatsky headed the film industry. Shumyatsky had a role in the suppression of Eisenstein's unfinished film Bezhin Meadow in 1937, though in the end it was Stalin's decision to ban it. On 18 March 1937 Shumyatsky delivered the opening speech at a three-day conference on cinema, which consisted mainly of an attack on Eisenstein, and on 28 March wrote a letter to Molotov denouncing seven people by name for conspiring to rescue the banned film and "discredit me as the stifler of the 'brilliant work of S. Eisenstein'". Four of those he named were arrested and shot. On 16 April, he sent Stalin a note suggesting that Eisenstein should never be allowed to make another film. He was, if anything, even more hostile to the innovative director, Lev Kuleshov, whom he accused of not understanding the importance of a strong story line in films. He wrote that "a plotless form for a work of art is powerless to express an idea of any significance". He claimed that this and other important lessons for film directors could be learnt by studying the works of Stalin, because "If only we were to collect all the theoretical riches of Joseph Vissarionovich's remarks on cinema, what a critical weapon we would have."

Arrest and Death

On 31 December 1937, Shumyatsky and his wife were summoned to celebrate the New Year at Stalin's dacha, where guests were required to drink a toast to Stalin's health. Shumyatsky, who was teetotal and was repelled by the smell of alcohol, took only a small sip, upon which Stalin demanded to know why a subordinate would not drink to his health. According to his wife, Shumyatsky went home fearing the worst. He was arrested on the night of 17–18 January 1938. On the same day, Pravda carried an excoriating account of his record as the head of the cinema industry. He was accused of collaborating with saboteurs within the film industry. On 28 June 1938 he was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad.

Honours and awards

  • Order of Lenin (January 11, 1935)
  • 40px Order of the Red Banner (Mongolia) (1926)

Family

Shumyatsky married Liya Isaevna Pandra (1889–1957), who took her husband's surname, a student of a paramedic school, the daughter of a wealthy merchant from the Siberian city of Kansk.

They had two daughters, Yekaterina and Nora. Yekaterina was arrested with her parents on 17 January 1938.

Nora Shumyatskaya (1909–1985) married Lazar Shapiro, (1903–1943), the Chairman of the Fire Brigade Union, who was arrested in September 1937, released in 1940. Their son, Boris Lazarevich Shumyatsky became a prominent art critic, and author of 200 works. She was raped by a colleague while her husband was in prison, and conceived a second son, Andrei, in February 1940, whom she raised with her other son.