Christian Georgievich Rakovsky
Христиан Георгиевич Раковский
From Balkan revolutionary to head of Soviet Ukraine: the diplomat who became an opposition theorist
"Our misfortune is that we held responsible posts and power turned our heads." Final plea at the 1938 Moscow trial
A pan-European revolutionary of Bulgarian ethnic origin who also held Romanian citizenship, Rakovsky founded the Balkan Social Democratic Federation. As chairman of the Ukrainian Council of People's Commissars from 1919 to 1923 he helped build the Ukrainian Soviet state, and he later served as Soviet ambassador to Britain and France. A Left Opposition theoretician who challenged Stalin's nationalities policy and party bureaucratisation, he was expelled in 1927, admitted his errors to Stalin in 1934 and was readmitted in 1935. Sentenced to 20 years at the Third Moscow Trial in 1938, he was shot at Oryol on 11 September 1941 and rehabilitated on 4 February 1988.
Career timeline
- 1890–1896Medical studies in Geneva, Berlin, Montpellier; active in European socialist movements
- 1910Revived Romanian Social Democratic Party; founded Balkan Social Democratic Federation, first secretary
- 1919–1923Chairman of Sovnarkom of Ukraine; People's Commissar of Foreign and Internal Affairs
- 1919–1927Member of the Central Committee of the RCP(b); Orgburo member (1919–1920)
- 1923–1927Plenipotentiary representative of the USSR to Britain (1923–1925) and France (1925–1927)
- 1927–1935Left Opposition leader; expelled from party, exiled to Astrakhan, Saratov, Barnaul
- 1934–1937Admitted his errors to Stalin in 1934, readmitted to the party in November 1935; head of scientific institutes administration at RSFSR Health Commissariat
- 1937–1941Expelled again in 1936, arrested January 1937, Third Moscow Trial 20-year sentence; shot at Oryol on 11 September 1941