The commissar who steered from famine's shadow to NEP finance, then fell under industrialization's demands
At the 5 April 1930 Politburo meeting Stalin passed an obscene note mocking Bryukhanov, who had proposed nickel alloy coinage, and Mezhlauk appended a drawing of the hanging commissar; both were shot in 1938.
A Bolshevik from 1902, born in Simbirsk as the son of a land-surveyor official; he studied at Moscow and Kazan universities without graduating and was expelled for revolutionary activity. Under the Tsar he endured repeated arrests and exile, headed the Bolshevik committee in Ufa and chaired the Ufa Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and was a delegate to the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference. During the Civil War he helped organize mass grain requisitions and directed the food detachments and punitive expeditions, and became People's Commissar of Finance on 16 January 1926. Removed on 18 October 1930 and relegated to secondary posts, he was arrested on 3 February 1938, shot on 1 September 1938 and rehabilitated in 1956; some reference works give his death as 30 June 1942.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1899–1905Arrested and expelled for student unrest; joined RSDLP (1902); underground work and exile in Kazan and Vologda
- 1906–1917Edited Bolshevik newspaper in Ufa; delegate to the 5th Party Congress; Ural regional committee; repeated arrests
- 1917–1921Ufa Governorate food commissar; Deputy RSFSR People's Commissar for Food; chairman of the Special Food Commission for the Eastern Front
- 1921–1924People's Commissar for Food of the RSFSR then USSR; concurrently head of Red Army food supply
- 1924–1926Deputy People's Commissar of Finance of the USSR, assisting Sokolnikov's NEP stabilization
- 1926–1930People's Commissar of Finance of the USSR; managed fiscal and coinage policy during early Five-Year Plan
- 1930–1937Deputy chair of Moscow Oblast Executive, supply deputy commissar, deputy chair of Central Yield Commission; pensioned June 1937
- 1938Arrested 3 February, shot 1 September. Rehabilitated 1956
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionPeople's Commissar for Food, managing supplies
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)Finance commissar of the late NEPFrom 1924 to 1926 he served as Sokolnikov's deputy, assisting the chervonets stabilization; in 1926 he succeeded him as People's Commissar of Finance, managing the fiscal system through the late NEP and into the early First Five-Year Plan. In 1930, amid a silver shortage, he proposed nickel-alloy coinage, a practical measure that drew Stalin's anger and led to his dismissal.
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationPeople's Commissar of Finance
- 1937–1938The Great Purgearrested and executed in 1937-1938
Food Commissar: Famine, Requisition, and the Turn to NEP
Bryukhanov straddled the most brutal phase of Soviet food policy and its most delicate transition. Appointed Deputy People's Commissar for Food in 1918, he became a key executor of the Civil War-era grain monopoly and armed requisitioning system known as prodrazverstka. According to the Russian historical reference Khronos, he was "one of the organizers of mass grain requisitions from the peasantry, directed the actions of the food detachments (prodotryady) and punitive expeditions, and suppressed peasant uprisings against forced grain seizures." From August 1919 he simultaneously chaired the Special Food Commission for the Eastern Front, managing Red Army supply lines, and from January 1920 he headed the Main Directorate for Red Army and Navy Food Supply (Glavsnabprodarm).
When he succeeded Alexander Tsyurupa as People's Commissar for Food of the RSFSR in December 1921, the Volga basin famine of 1921–22 had already killed millions. That same March, the 10th Party Congress had declared the historic turn to NEP, replacing prodrazverstka with the tax in kind (prodnalog). Bryukhanov inherited the contradictory task of converting a brutal requisition apparatus into a tax-based procurement system. The 'First Short-Term State Grain Loan' bonds of 1922, denominated in poods of rye, from 1 to 50, bore his signature: documents that symbolized both the return to a money economy and the continued desperation of food supply.
Elevated to People's Commissar for Food of the USSR in July 1923, Bryukhanov saw his commissariat abolished in May 1924 as the NEP stabilized. His Food Commissariat was a transitional institution caught between Civil War supply dictatorship and NEP market restoration. And his career was a product of that same transition. After the commissariat's dissolution he moved to the Finance Commissariat as Sokolnikov's deputy.