Stalin's close friend and the 17-year organizational backbone of the Soviet state, the first fall that opened the Great Purge
"Coco, they are old Bolsheviks like me, like you. You won't shed the blood of old Bolsheviks!" Yenukidze tried to dissuade Stalin from putting Kamenev and Zinoviev on trial and executing them. Stalin replied: "Remember, Avel — whoever is not with me is against me."
An Old Bolshevik (party member since 1898), co-founder of the Baku Social-Democratic organization and the underground 'Nina' press in the Caucasus. As Secretary of VTsIK (1918–1922) and then the TsIK of the USSR (1922–1935), he managed the apparatus of the Soviet state's highest formal body for 17 years, across the formation and consolidation of the Union. A close member of Stalin's inner circle and godfather to Nadezhda Alliluyeva, he was the first individual recipient of the Order of Lenin (No. 3). His expulsion in 1935, the first member of the XVII Congress Central Committee to fall, was a significant prelude to the Great Purge.
Career Timeline
- 1898Co-founder of the Baku Social-Democratic organization
- 1901–1906Co-founded and ran the underground 'Nina' press in the Caucasus
- 1902–1914Arrested seven times; exiled to Kresty, Metekhi Castle, Onega, Turukhansk
- 1917Petrograd Soviet executive committee, VRK member, October uprising participant
- 1918–1922Secretary of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK)
- 1922–1935Secretary of the Central Executive Committee (TsIK) of the USSR
- 1932First individual recipient of the Order of Lenin (No. 3)
- 1935/1959Expelled from CC and party; arrested and shot 1937; rehabilitated 1959
Related historical events
- 1917.10–1918.01The October Revolutionmember of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee
- 1922.12Formation of the USSRSecretary of the Union Central Executive Committee · administrative architect of the union apparatusHe served as Secretary of the TsIK from the very day the USSR was founded (31 December 1922) until 1935, managing the practical work of union formation and institutionalization. In 1932 he became the first individual recipient of the Order of Lenin (No. 3), awarded for 'exceptional services in the formation of the USSR.'
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeTargetAn Old Bolshevik at the center of the Soviet state apparatus for seventeen years, executed in 1937.
The Kremlin Affair and Downfall
After the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, the NKVD launched wide-ranging security checks on Kremlin personnel. In early 1935, the 'Kremlin Plot' (Кремлёвское дело) was announced: Mikhail Cherniavsky, an officer who had studied at MIT, was named leader of a 'terrorist' conspiracy to assassinate Stalin, with lax security supposedly allowing the plotters' access. Some 110 people were investigated, including Lev Kamenev's brother. Yenukidze, who oversaw Kremlin security as TsIK Secretary, was removed from his post in February 1935. On 21 March, the Politburo circulated the 'Report on the Apparatus of the TsIK and Comrade Yenukidze' to Central Committee members. The report was delivered by Nikolai Yezhov, then newly promoted to CC Secretary, who accused Yenukidze of failing to exercise political vigilance. At the CC plenum of 5–7 June 1935, Yezhov claimed five 'terrorist groups' within the Kremlin had targeted Stalin and directly attacked Yenukidze. The plenum expelled him from the Central Committee and the party for 'political and personal dissolution.' He was the first member of the Central Committee elected at the XVII Congress to fall.
After his removal, Yenukidze was nominally appointed chairman of the Transcaucasian TsIK but never took up the post, pleading with Ordzhonikidze and Voroshilov to let him stay in Moscow on health grounds. He was instead sent to run the Mineralnye Vody resort agency in the North Caucasus, but Stalin considered even this too lenient. In a coded message to Kaganovich, Yezhov, and Molotov on 7 September 1935, Stalin called the appointment a 'mistake' and demanded a further demotion to a minor post in Rostov or Kharkiv. Yenukidze initially ignored the Politburo's order but was ultimately forced to accept the directorship of the Kharkiv regional auto transport trust. Miraculously reinstated in the party at a CC plenum in June 1936, he was arrested in Kharkiv on 11 February 1937 (exactly one week before Ordzhonikidze's death). Beria had already publicly savaged Yenukidze in a July 1935 Tbilisi lecture, denouncing his book 'Our Underground Printing Houses in the Caucasus' for erasing Stalin's revolutionary role; Yenukidze was forced to publish a humiliating retraction in Pravda. The real reason he fell from Stalin's favour, it is said, was his plea that Kamenev and Zinoviev not be put to death.