A planner purged by the system he served
During government meetings, Mezhlauk drew caricatures of his colleagues. 532 sketches survived in Voroshilov's secret files; after Mezhlauk was arrested, Beria forwarded one with a note: 'V. Mezhlauk's work.'
A theorist and chief operator of Soviet planned economy, he led the drafting of the first three Five-Year Plans. As Gosplan chairman he oversaw industrialization targets and resource allocation, and in 1929 negotiated the Ford contract that built the Gorky Auto Plant. He edited the newspaper For Industrialization and was known for his satirical caricatures of party officials drawn during meetings. Of Latvian origin, he was arrested during the Great Terror on charges of leading a 'Latvian counterrevolutionary organization' and shot in 1938.
Career Timeline
- 1917–1920sLatvian Bolshevik who rises through civil-war and economic administration
- 1931–1934Handles Five-Year Plan indicators in heavy-industry and economic administration
- 1934–1937Gosplan chairman coordinating industrialization targets and allocations
- 1937Arrested during the Great Terror
- 1938Shot, showing that planning organs were also targets of the purge
Related historical events
Arrest and the Destruction of a Family
1937 was a breathless year for Mezhlauk. In February he moved from Gosplan chairman to People's Commissar of Heavy Industry; in August to People's Commissar of Machine Building; in October back to Gosplan chairman; then to Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. Four top posts in ten months. Then on December 2 the NKVD arrested him. The charges: 'contacts with the German government,' 'membership in the rightist faction since 1925,' and 'leadership of the Latvian counterrevolutionary underground.' Stalin personally signed execution lists in April and July 1938. On July 28 the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court sentenced him to death, and in the early hours of July 29 he was shot at the Kommunarka killing field outside Moscow.
The tragedy consumed his family as well. His younger brother Ivan Mezhlauk was arrested two days after Valery and shot on April 25, 1938. A third brother, Valentin, was also arrested and reportedly took his own life. His first wife Sofia died in a Kolyma camp; his third wife Charna, arrested the same day as her husband, was shot in October 1941. Their only daughter Alla had already died in a train accident in July 1936, at age sixteen. On March 17, 1956, Mezhlauk was posthumously rehabilitated.