The Left Opposition secretary whom Lenin called a 'brilliant worker'
His daughter Zorya recalled: "Lenin once called my father a 'brilliant worker.'"
A worker-revolutionary who joined the Bolsheviks at age 15 and was a delegate to the Prague Conference (1912), he led a soldiers' mutiny in Kostroma during the February Revolution. As Central Committee Secretary (1920–1921) and member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front, he played a key role in the Civil War, and later oversaw Soviet railways and road administration as Deputy People's Commissar for Transport. He signed the Declaration of 46 in 1923 and became one of Trotsky's closest comrades in the Left Opposition; expelled and exiled in 1927, he was reinstated in 1930 but ultimately tried as a main defendant in the Second Moscow Show Trial and executed in 1937.
Career Timeline
- 1905Joined Bolsheviks at 15, agitation work in Lugansk
- 1908–1916Repeated arrests and exiles (Vologda, Narym), escapes and rearrests
- 1912Delegate to the Prague Party Conference
- 1917Led February mutiny in Kostroma, Secretary of Moscow Party Committee
- 1919–1921CC Secretary, Orgburo member, Southern Front Revvoensovet member
- 1922–1924Head of Political Administration RVSR, Deputy People's Commissar for Transport
- 1923–1927Signed Declaration of 46, Left Opposition leadership — expelled
- 1928–1937Exiled to Semipalatinsk, reinstated, head of Central Highway Administration, tried and executed in Second Moscow Show Trial
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905Young Bolshevik agitatorHe joined the Bolsheviks at age 17 during the 1905 Revolution and took part in workers' agitation and strike organizing in Lugansk and the Donets Basin.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionMember of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)secretary of the Left Opposition who fought against the NEP line
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeMain defendant, Second Moscow TrialArrested in August 1936, he was tried as a principal defendant in the 'Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center' case in January 1937, sentenced to death on 30 January and shot on 1 February 1937. Rehabilitated in December 1986.
The Second Moscow Show Trial and Death
Serebryakov was arrested on August 17, 1936 and in January 1937 became one of the 17 main defendants in the Second Moscow Show Trial: the case of the so-called "Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Centre." Prosecutor Vyshinsky's indictment named him, alongside Pyatakov, Radek, and Sokolnikov, as a member of the "reserve centre" (later called the "parallel centre") and alleged he had participated in an attempt on the lives of Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenty Beria and directed diversionary sabotage attacks on Soviet railways. In fact, Serebryakov was head of the automobile and highway transport administration, not the railways, a detail that lays bare the fabricated nature of the charges.
According to the testimony of his daughter Zorya Serebryakova, he confessed and cooperated with the trial in order to save her life. Zorya was 14 at the time; after her parents' arrest she was herself arrested as the child of "enemies of the people" and sent into exile. Unlike many other defendants, Zorya recalled, Serebryakov never spoke a bad word about Trotsky during the trial. He was sentenced to death on January 30, 1937 and shot on February 1. His house and property were appropriated by Vyshinsky, his prosecutor.
He was rehabilitated during perestroika by a decision of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR on December 4, 1986, and his party membership was restored on June 10, 1987.