1890–1938
✕ Executed
The revolutionary who ordered the Kremlin shelled, and the proletarian writer who published thirty books
On 24 January 1924, Arosev signed a receipt for the Lenin Institute: 'a glass jar containing the brain, the heart of Ilyich, and the bullet extracted from his body.' 'I am personally responsible for its complete integrity and safekeeping.'
The son of a Kazan tailor, he was recruited into Bolshevism in 1907 by his childhood friend Vyacheslav Molotov. During the October 1917 uprising he sat on the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee and gave the order to shell the Kremlin; during the Civil War he chaired the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal of Ukraine, spearheading the Red Terror. In 1934 he became the first chairman of VOKS, building the institutional framework for Soviet cultural diplomacy, after serving as ambassador to Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, and France. A prolific proletarian writer (more than thirty novels, plays, and memoirs), he was noted for an autobiographical style that probed the inner psychology of Party life. But in 1937 he was arrested and shot the following year; rehabilitated in 1956.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1907Joined RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
- 1917.10Member, Moscow MRC; ordered shelling of the Kremlin
- 1918Commissar, Glavvozdukhflot (Red Air Fleet)
- 1920Chairman, Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal of Ukraine
- 1921–1927Deputy Director, Lenin Institute; Cheka/OGPU; diplomat in France, Sweden
- 1927–1928USSR Plenipotentiary to Lithuania
- 1929–1933USSR Plenipotentiary to Czechoslovakia
- 1934–1937Chairman, VOKS (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations)
Related historical events
Cultural diplomacy with Romain Rolland
After becoming chairman of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS) in 1934, Arosev played an important role in preparing French writer Romain Rolland's 1935 visit to the Soviet Union. In a letter to Arosev dated 12 May, Rolland set out requirements for accommodation, food, and medical care; expressed concern about delays to the next volumes of his collected works; and asked for confirmation that he could meet Maxim Gorky and Joseph Stalin in Moscow. Plans for the visit produced a crisis of trust when Arosev tried to arrange Rolland's stay at a guarded government dacha rather than Gorky's home, but he regained Rolland's confidence, and their correspondence and meetings continued later at Rolland's villa in Switzerland. The correspondence shows Arosev arranging the conditions of a foreign writer's visit and seeking access to Soviet leaders as part of cultural-relations work. A study of his cultural diplomacy notes a contrast: his diary and unpublished reports on European fellow-travelers show considerable affinity for the West, while his literary works, mass-produced pamphlets, and letters to Stalin express greater hostility.