Bolshevik who built the Soviet Air Force and ran foreign trade
After the Arcos raid of 12 May 1927 in London, Rozengolts submitted a seven-page protest memorandum denying military espionage, but on 24 May Prime Minister Baldwin disclosed the seized documents to Parliament, and on 25 May Britain severed diplomatic relations and expelled him.
A Bolshevik from 1905, when he joined at 16, he became a Civil War political commissar, helped take Kazan and served against Kolchak. He headed the Soviet Air Force from 1922 to 1924, then spent 1925–1927 in London as chargé d'affaires through the Arcos raid and the break in Anglo-Soviet relations. Returning home, he broke with the opposition and joined the Stalinist apparatus. People's Commissar of Foreign Trade from 1930 to 1937, he was dismissed, arrested, sentenced to death in the 1938 Trial of the Twenty-One and shot.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1905–1917Joins Bolsheviks at 16, delegate to the 4th Congress; underground work as an insurance agent in Vitebsk, Kiev and elsewhere
- 1917Member of Moscow Soviet executive committee, Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee; takes part in October armed uprising
- 1918–1920Member of the Republic's Revolutionary War Council, commissar with 8th and 5th Armies; creates Tsektran transport committee
- 1922–1924Head of the Soviet Air Force; secret military talks with the German high command; signs the Declaration of 46
- 1925–1927Chargé d'affaires in London; Arcos raid (12 May), expulsion as relations break on 25 May
- 1927–1930Member and presidium member of the Central Control Commission; works in Rabkrin (Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate)
- 1930–1937People's Commissar of Foreign Trade — directs trade during Five-Year Plans, clashes with Ordzhonikidze over equipment imports
- 1937–1938Dismissed 14 June, moved to State Reserves, arrested 7 October; sentenced to death in the third Moscow trial
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905joined Bolsheviks in 1905 and delegate to the 4th Party CongressHe joined the Bolsheviks during the 1905 Revolution and was elected a delegate to the 4th (Unity) RSDLP Congress in Stockholm the following year.
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionMember of Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionMember of the Revolutionary Military Council and political commissar
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)People's Commissar of Foreign Trade
- 1923–1927The Succession Struggle and the Left Oppositionsignatory of the Declaration of the 46He signed the Declaration of the 46, which called for intraparty democracy in 1923.
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationPeople's Commissar of Foreign Trade
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeTarget of the Third Moscow TrialThe former foreign-trade commissar was condemned in the Third Moscow Trial and executed in 1938.
Chief of the Soviet Air Force and Secret German Military Cooperation
In January 1922 Rozengolts was appointed chief of the Red Air Fleet (Glavvozdukhoflot), tasked with rebuilding Soviet aviation practically from scratch after the devastation of the Civil War. He set four priorities: institutionalizing aviation science, building a state aircraft industry, creating a pilot and technician training pipeline, and securing ground infrastructure. Rallying enthusiasts and converting their work into a national project, he oversaw the integration of the new 'Ilyich' air squadron into the Red Air Fleet by the summer of 1924.
At the same time, Rozengolts was the key negotiator who gave concrete shape to the secret military clauses of the Rapallo Treaty (1922). That year he made direct contact with the German Reichswehr to discuss a framework for cooperation in aviation and armor. Those talks later materialized as the Lipetsk fighter-pilot school (1926–1933), the Kama tank school, and the Tomka gas-testing site. In this dual arrangement, Germany, barred by Versailles from maintaining an air force, trained pilots and tested new aircraft on Soviet soil, while the USSR absorbed German technology and doctrine. The partnership acted as midwife to both countries' military reconstruction until it ended with the Nazi rise to power in 1933.
== People's Commissar of Foreign Trade, 1930–1937 ==
On 10 September 1930 Rozengolts was appointed Deputy People's Commissar for Trade. The commissar was Anastas Mikoyan, a member of Stalin's inner circle; Stalin, concluding that Mikoyan could not deal with the USSR's trade deficit, decided to "prop him up" with an outstanding deputy. In November that year the commissariat was divided in two and Rozengolts became People's Commissar for Foreign Trade, directing Soviet foreign trade until 1937, the longest single office of his career.
Under pressure to improve the trade balance he clashed fiercely with the People's Commissar for Heavy Industry, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, over imported equipment; one argument became so heated that Ordzhonikidze nearly came to blows with him. Reporting back from a Politburo session in August 1931, Stalin's deputy Lazar Kaganovich noted that "the exchange of courtesies between 'Rozen' and Sergo was very unpleasant." The quarrel exposed how, under the foreign-trade monopoly, industrialization funding and equipment procurement were allocated.
He was also the author of pamphlets on the establishment of Soviet power and on USSR foreign trade. Not later than 30 December 1934 he spoke to the VII All-Union Congress of Soviets on trade and economic relations between the USSR and the capitalist states, and the report of that speech was published in Vneshnyaya torgovlya (1935, no. 3) under his name as People's Commissar of Foreign Trade of the USSR. On 14 June 1937 he was dismissed from the post and moved to the administration of state reserves; he was arrested on 7 October that year.