Nikolai Vasilyevich Ustryalov
Николай Васильевич Устрялов
Founder of National Bolshevism, the exile who saw the Bolsheviks turning into Russian state-builders
The USSR is like a radish — red on the outside, but white on the inside — an insight repeated across Smena Vekh and later works.
A jurist and Kadet from Saint Petersburg. After graduating Moscow University (1913), he headed Kolchak's press bureau in the Civil War, then fled to Harbin where he published Smena Vekh (1921), founding the Smenovekhovstvo movement and arguing Bolshevism alone could restore Russian statehood. He described the NEP-era USSR as a radish: red outside, white inside. His ideas were debated at the XIV Party Congress by Stalin and Zinoviev (1925). He repatriated in 1935, taught in Moscow, and was arrested in June 1937 and shot on 14 September. His National Bolshevism resurfaced through Limonov and Dugin's NBP in the 1990s.
Career timeline
- 1913–1916Graduated Moscow University Law Faculty (1st class), privat-docent; joined the Kadet Party
- 1917–1918Ordinary Professor at Perm University, lecturing on state law and legal philosophy
- 1919–1920Chief of Kolchak government's Press Bureau; White ideological front during the Civil War
- 1920–1935Harbin exile: law professor and KVZhD advisor; founded Okno journal, launched Smenovekhovstvo with Smena Vekh (1921)
- 1925Published Under the Sign of Revolution; debated by Stalin and Zinoviev at the XIV Party Congress
- 1925–1934KVZhD Head of Education (1925–28), Library Director (1928–34); edited sinology bibliography
- 1935–1937Returned to USSR; professor at Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers; arrested June 1937, shot 14 September 1937