The Red commander of the Urals
In 1926, after Zinoviev broke with Stalin, the Left Opposition weighed an alliance. Mrachkovsky: 'With no one — Zinoviev will run and Stalin will deceive.'
A Bolshevik organizer and Civil War hero from the Urals, he led the Special Northern Expeditionary Detachment to capture Tobolsk and was twice awarded the Order of the Red Banner. He later commanded military districts before becoming the first head of Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) construction. A key figure in the Left Opposition, he coined the famous warning 'Zinoviev will run away, and Stalin will deceive,' and was executed at the first Moscow Trial in 1936.
Career Timeline
- 1917–1921Ural revolutionary and Red Army commander
- 1923–1927Left Opposition activity and expulsion
- 1935–1936Imprisonment, first Moscow Trial and execution
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionRed Army commander in the Urals
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)Left Opposition activist who criticized NEP economic policies
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeLeft Opposition targetExpelled for opposition activity in 1927, he was executed at the first Moscow Trial in 1936.
The First Moscow Trial and Execution
At the first Moscow Trial, the 'Trial of the Sixteen,' held from August 19 to 24, 1936, Mrachkovsky was one of 16 defendants in the case of the 'Anti-Soviet United Trotskyist-Zinovievite Center.' He stood accused alongside Zinoviev, Kamenev, Ivan Smirnov, and others of organizing terrorist acts against Stalin and Kirov. He had already been arrested in January 1935 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment; while serving his sentence he was drawn into the new case. The trial was conducted with all defendants confessing. On August 24 all were sentenced to death and shot the following day, August 25. Their bodies were buried in a mass grave at Donskoye Cemetery. Mrachkovsky was posthumously rehabilitated by the Plenum of the USSR Supreme Court on July 13, 1988. His brother Leonid (shot March 25, 1937) and his sons Vyacheslav and Leonid (both shot April 1, 1937) also perished in the Great Purge.