Christian Georgiyevich Rakovsky ( – September 11, 1941), Bulgarian name Krastyo Georgiev Rakovski, born Krastyo Georgiev Stanchov, was a Bulgarian-born socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat and statesman; 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 Romanian citizen.

A lifelong collaborator of Leon Trotsky, he was a prominent activist of the Second International, involved in politics with the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party, 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 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.

Names

Rakovsky's original Bulgarian name was Krastyo Georgiev Stanchev (Кръстьо Георгиев Станчев), which he himself changed to Krastyo Rakovski (Кръстьо Раковски), being a grandnephew of the Bulgarian national hero Georgi Rakovski. 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, writer Ion Luca Caragiale.

In Russian, his full name, including patronymic, was Khristian Georgievich Rakovsky (Христиан 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 Khrystyian Heorhiiovych Rakovskyi.

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.

Biography

Revolutionary beginnings

Christian Rakovsky was born to a wealthy Bulgarian family in Gradets — near Kotel — at the time still part of Ottoman-ruled Rumelia. He was, on his mother's side, the grandnephew 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. Rakovsky was expelled from the gymnasium in Gabrovo for his political activities (in 1887 and then again, after organizing a riot, in 1890).

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. 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 briefly worked with Rosa Luxemburg, Pavel Axelrod, and Vera Zasulich.

According to his own testimony, he became active in supporting the Anti-Ottoman upsurge in Crete and Macedonia, as well as Dashnak revolutionary activities. (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. (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,

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).

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.

România Muncitoare

thumb|right|Front page of Jos Despotizmul!.. ("Down with [[Despotism!!!"), a special issue of România Muncitoare, entirely dedicated to criticism of the Imperial Russian authorities (February 1905)]]

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,

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. carried out a relief operation for the Potemkin crew as their ship sought refuge in Constanţa, while recovering, Rakovsky befriended the Romanian poets Ștefan 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. 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.

He became close to the influential dramatist Ion Luca Caragiale, who was living in Berlin at the time.

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 Stuttgart (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; 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 From the Kingdom of Arbitrariness and Cowardice - in Romanian Din regimul arbitrarului şi laşităţei (Contribuţiune la Istoria Oligarhiei Române)).

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. caused a series of important street clashes between his supporters and government forces. The event, which was attributed by Rakovsky to support for his return caused a clampdown on România Muncitoare (among those socialists arrested and interrogated were Gheorghe Cristescu, I. C. Frimu, and Dumitru Marinescu). earlier, the leading National Liberal politician Ion G. Duca himself had argued that Rakovsky was developing a "hatred for Romania".

PSDR and Zimmerwald Movement

thumb|right|From left: Rakovsky, [[Leon Trotsky, and Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, during a meeting in Bucharest (1913 drawing)]]

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.

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. 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 Muncitoares title was changed into Jos Răsboiul! ("Down with war!")—it was later to be known as Lupta Zilnică (the "Daily combat").

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).

thumb|right|Advertising, Parliamentary elections, 1916

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". Rakovsky also drew attention to himself after welcoming to Bucharest the pro-German maverick socialist Alexander Parvus.

Rakovsky himself alleged that, "under the mask of independence", Adevărul and its editor Constantin Mille were in the pay of Take Ionescu. 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.

October Revolution

Rakovsky moved to Petrograd (the new name of Saint Petersburg) in the spring of 1917. 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.

As the coup was under preparation in December 1917, Rakovsky was present on the border and waiting a signal to enter the country. 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. 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 ignored the Ukrainian "national question" because of his view on the nationalist movements as a counter-revolutionary force, as Rakovsky believed that national issues were important during the bourgeois era, but that they would lose its importance during the emerging world revolution. He seemed unaware of the dangers of Russian nationalism and chauvinism and claimed that the "danger of Russification under the existing Ukrainian Soviet authority is entirely without foundation", although he changed his stance in the early 1920s

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. Rakovsky subscribed to the Bolshevik condemnation of Greater Romania, stance that journalist Victor Frunză considered a revision of his previous views on Bessarabia.

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'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.

On 13 February 1919, in a session of Kyiv City Council, and later in March 1919, during the Third All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, Rakovsky as a head of Ukrainian government stated that "decreeing the Ukrainian language as a state language is reactionary and unnecessary", as there is no need to declare state languages in Soviet republics; according to him, all languages are equal in Soviet Ukraine, and "no decrees are needed to make the language spoken by the vast majority of the population the de facto dominant language... I must state to you that we had to issue a reprimand to the Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs, who... issued an order that political affairs at the Post and the Telegraph should be conducted exclusively in the Russian language."

In March 1919, Rakovsky was a founding member of the Comintern, where he represented the Balkan Communist Federation. This appears not to have been true, as Rakovsky reportedly urged Lenin to finance Kun even as the latter faced the intervention of troops from both Romania and Czechoslovakia. He was sentenced to death in absentia (1924). Journalist Victor Frunză claims this move had been prompted by a supposed 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).

left|thumb|[[Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister UK and Christian Rakovsky, Head of the Soviet diplomatic delegation.]]

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. 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. 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. and who agreed to recognize the latter on October 28, 1924. 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. Poincaré returned to power, and France remained committed to the Locarno Treaties (which had isolated the Soviet state on the international stage). Since this could endanger Mexico's relations with the United States, President Plutarco Elías Calles chose to deescalate the conflict. 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. The former was interrupted fifty-seven times by his opponents—Nikolai Bukharin, Martemyan Ryutin, and Lazar Kaganovich. 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 manifestos addressed to the workers in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia (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. 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]<!-- note that this is not a missing link: the brackets replace the Russian term used in the original translation, for clarity --> 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). Rakovsky remained involved in Trotskyist politics, was contacted by Panait Istrati and the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, Mistrusting Stalin's new leftist policies, he foresaw the renewed moves against the Left Opposition (inaugurated by Trotsky's 1929 expulsion). 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.

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,

Cited in allegations involving the killing of Sergey Kirov, Rakovsky was arrested in autumn 1937, during the Great Purge; In his forced confession to Andrey Vyshinsky, he admitted to all the charges—including having been a spy (for Japan) In 1941, he was in Oryol Prison. After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), Rakovsky was shot on Stalin's orders outside Oryol 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.

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 right-wing 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. 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 Rosengolts, and other five officials. Bukharin, Rakovsky, Rozengolts, and Chernov were posthumously reinstated to the Communist Party on 21 June 1988. His works were given imprimatur, while a favorable biography was published by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (late 1988).

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

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