The pragmatic Bolshevik who designed and led the Far Eastern Republic
After Krasnoshchyokov was dismissed during an illness, Lenin protested in a letter to Molotov: "We have harassed this man, who undoubtedly has brains, energy, knowledge and experience."
The first head of the Far Eastern Republic (1920–1921) and a key architect of the early Soviet mixed-economy experiment. After emigrating to America in 1902, he graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and worked as a labour attorney before returning to Russia in 1917 and immediately joining the Bolsheviks. He persuaded Lenin to create a buffer state in the Far East to secure Japan's withdrawal during the Civil War, personally drafting the republic's constitution in English and securing the Gongota Agreement with Japan as premier and foreign minister. He later served as Deputy People's Commissar for Finance, joined the Presidium of Vesenkha, and founded Prombank, laying the institutional foundations for industrial finance under the NEP.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1896Joined illegal Marxist group in Kiev
- 1902Escaped to Germany, emigrated to the US in 1903
- 1912Graduated Univ. Chicago Law School, practiced labour law
- 1917–1918Bolshevik leader in Vladivostok/Nikolsk-Ussuriysk, pres. Far Eastern Sovnarkom
- 1920–1921Chairman of Government & Foreign Minister, Far Eastern Republic
- 1921–1922Deputy People's Commissar for Finance, RSFSR
- 1922–1923Vesenkha Presidium · founded and chaired Prombank
- 1923First chairman of Dobrolyot (state airline)
- 1924–1925Sentenced to 6 years for corruption, amnestied in 1925
- 1926–1937Headed new bast crops directorate & fibre crops institute, Narkomzem
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionArchitect of the Far Eastern RepublicDesigned the Far Eastern Republic, the buffer state created in April 1920 to avoid direct conflict with Japanese troops, and headed its government.
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)Architect of NEP-era industrial financeHe founded Prombank, laying the institutional foundations for industrial finance under the NEP.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeEconomic official targetedThe first head of the Far Eastern Republic and an architect of NEP-era industrial finance was arrested and executed in 1937.
The Far Eastern Republic: designing and limiting a buffer state
The Far Eastern Republic (ДВР, April 1920–November 1922) was Krasnoshchyokov's political creation and one of the most unusual state experiments in Soviet history. As the Civil War drew to a close in early 1920, roughly 175,000 Japanese troops stood in the Far East, while Moscow also faced the Polish war and Wrangel's forces in the west: a head-on clash with Japan was a risk it could not afford. Krasnoshchyokov, together with Ivan Smirnov, proposed the idea of a 'buffer' state; crossing the front line to reach Red Army headquarters in Tomsk, he persuaded Lenin. On 6 April 1920 a republic was proclaimed, independent and democratic in form, in substance a buffer controlled by Moscow.
Krasnoshchyokov assembled the state almost literally by hand. Its constitution was drafted first in English, the language he had learned in America, before being rendered into Russian. The government was a coalition from the start: he insisted on legalising the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and drew them into the cabinet, alongside non-party specialists, among them Vladivostok businessman Boris Bryner, father of a future Hollywood star. Asked in July 1920 for the basic principles of the constitution, Lenin answered in a single phrase: 'Democracy with small privileges for the communists is permissible.' The 1921 constitution declared in its first article that 'the Far Eastern Republic is established as a democratic republic' while fixing state ownership of land, minerals, forests and waters, and its finance section opened with the words 'the institution of private property is preserved.' This mixed-economy experiment in effect rehearsed the NEP a year early.
His diplomatic achievement counted no less than the military one. At the Gongota station talks of May–July 1920 he negotiated with General Takayanagi of the Japanese expeditionary corps, and the Gongota Agreement of 15 July established a neutral zone between Verkhneudinsk and Chita. Japanese forces, harried by partisans, could now withdraw from Transbaikalia 'without losing face', and on 22 October the People's Revolutionary Army took Chita, unifying a territory the size of Western Europe. Krasnoshchyokov cabled Moscow: 'The unification of the Far East is an accomplished fact.' Lenin later judged that 'he organized nearly all of it himself.'
Yet the very features he had designed were what brought him down. His legalisation of the SRs and the RSDRP, his insistence on drawing them into the coalition, and his overemphasis on the republic's independence from the RSFSR drew accusations from the communists he worked with, Premier Nikiforov included. The protection of Lenin and Trotsky kept him in place for a time, but at the end of 1921 he was recalled from the republic. The buffer vanished as soon as it had served its purpose: the Red Army entered Vladivostok in October 1922, and in November the Far Eastern Republic was absorbed into the RSFSR. What Krasnoshchyokov demonstrated was that an extraordinary experiment in multiparty politics and the market could be conjured into being for the revolution's geographic advantage, and folded away the moment that need disappeared.