Architect of the chervonets who tamed NEP inflation, then broke with Stalin as the first high-ranking Soviet financial defector
Lenin to Sheinman, 28 February 1922: "At present the State Bank = a bureaucratic paper game. There is the truth for you, if you want to hear not the sweet communist-official lies, but the truth."
A Bolshevik since 1903, he chaired the Helsinki Soviet in 1917 and served in the Constituent Assembly. Across two terms as Gosbank chairman (1921–24, 1926–29), he introduced the gold-backed chervonets that tamed hyperinflation under the NEP. Lenin rebuked him for running a "bureaucratic paper game," yet that institution-building made monetary stabilization possible. Recalled from abroad in 1929, he refused to return, becoming an early nevozvrashchenets and escaping the purges in London exile.
Career Timeline
- 1903Joined the RSDLP
- 1917Chairman of Helsinki Soviet; Constituent Assembly deputy
- 1918–1919Financial attaché in Stockholm
- 1920–1921Plenipotentiary in Georgia
- 1921–1924Chairman of Gosbank (1st term); introduced the chervonets
- 1926–1929Chairman of Gosbank (2nd term); refused recall, defected
- 1933–1939Intourist London director; naturalised British
- 1944Died in London
Related historical events
The 1929 Defection: Recalled but Never Returned
In April 1929, while in Berlin, Sheinman refused to return to the Soviet Union. As Gosbank chairman, he possessed intimate knowledge of Soviet gold reserves, overseas accounts, and foreign debt negotiations. Abel Yenukidze, Secretary of the Central Executive Committee, was dispatched to Berlin to persuade him, but Sheinman replied: 'I have taken an irreparable false step, and all paths to the USSR are completely cut off for me.' He said he would not resist being declared insane or imprisoned. However, he would not accept any proposal to go back to Moscow.
Sheinman, however, held bargaining chips. He possessed the keys to a Berlin bank safe containing Central Committee funds and told Yenukidze he would 'hand over the keys and accounts at any moment.' According to the memoirs of Aino Kuusinen, wife of Otto Kuusinen, when party leaders later opened his safes in Moscow, they were already emptied: Sheinman had taken everything of value abroad beforehand.
In normal circumstances, Sheinman would have been marked for elimination. But astonishingly, the Soviet leadership negotiated. After nearly three years of deliberation, in November 1932, the Politburo resolved to give him work in Soviet institutions abroad. From 1933 he directed the London office of Intourist, even receiving a pay supplement in exchange for refraining from anti-Soviet activity. While his former colleagues were executed in the Great Purge, Sheinman acquired British citizenship in 1939 and died peacefully in London. This unique bargain, between the Soviet system and its first high-ranking nevozvrashchenets, reveals both the power of the information he held and the financial expertise that even Stalin could not ignore.