Lev Kamenev
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Lev Kamenev | |
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Лев Каменев | |
14th Central Committee | |
In office 17 January 1912 – 14 November 1927 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Leo Rosenfeld 18 July [ RSDLP (1901–1903) |
Spouses |
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Alma mater | Moscow State University |
Lev Borisovich Kamenev
Born in Moscow to a family active in revolutionary politics, Kamenev joined the
During Lenin's final illness in 1923–1924, Kamenev formed a leadership
In 1934, Kamenev was arrested after the assassination of
Early life and career
Kamenev was born as Lev Rozenfeld in Moscow, the son of a Jewish railway worker who converted to Russian Christian Orthodoxy and an ethnic Russian Orthodox Christian mother. Both of his parents were active in radical politics.[1] His father, an engine driver on the Moscow-Kursk railway, had been a fellow student of Ignacy Hryniewiecki, the revolutionary who killed the Tsar Alexander II.[2] When Kamenev was a child, his family moved to Vilno, and then in 1896, to Tiflis (now Tbilisi), where he first made contact with an illegal Marxist circle. His father used the capital he earned in the construction of the Baku–Batumi railway to pay for Lev's education.[citation needed] Kamenev attended the boys' Gymnasium in Tiflis. In 1900, he enrolled as law student in Imperial Moscow University. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1901,[3] and was arrested in March 1902 for taking part in a student protest, and, after a few months in prison, was sent back to Tbilisi under police escort. Later in 1902, he moved to Paris, where he met Vladimir Lenin, whose adherent and close associate he became, other Marxist exiles from the Iskra group that published the newspaper, and his wife, Olga Bronstein,[2] younger sister of Leon Trotsky. The couple had two sons together.
From that point on, Kamenev worked as a professional revolutionary and was active in the capitals of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Tiflis. In January 1904, he was forced to leave Tiflis, where he had helped organise a strike on the Transcaucasian railway, and moved to Moscow, where he learnt about the split between the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, and joined the Bolsheviks.[2] Arrested in February 1904, he was held in prison for five months, then deported back to Tiflis, where he joined the local Bolshevik committee, working alongside Georgian Bolsheviks, including Joseph Stalin. After attending the 3rd Congress of the RSDLP. in London in March 1905, he returned to Russia to participate in the Russian Revolution of 1905 in St. Petersburg in October–December.
He went back to London to attend the
In January 1910,
After the failure of the reunification attempt, Kamenev continued working for Proletariy and taught at the Bolshevik party school at Longjumeau near Paris.[4] It had been founded as a Leninist alternative to Bogdanov's Party School based in Capri. In January 1912, Kamenev helped Lenin and Zinoviev to convince the Prague Conference of Bolshevik delegates to split from the Mensheviks and Otzovists.
In January 1914, he was sent to St. Petersburg to direct the work of the Bolshevik version of Pravda and the Bolshevik faction of the Duma. He moved to Finland when Pravda was closed, in July 1914, and was there when World War I broke out.[2] He organised a conference in Finland Bolshevik delegates to the Duma and others, but all the participants were arrested in November tried in May 1915. In court, he distanced himself from Lenin's anti-war stance. In early 1915, Kamenev was sentenced to exile in Siberia; he survived two years there until being freed by the successful February Revolution of 1917.
Before leaving Siberia, Kamenev proposed sending a telegram thanking the Tsar's brother Mikhail for refusing the throne. He was so embarrassed later by his action that he denied ever having sent it.[5]
On 25 March 1917, Kamenev returned from Siberian exile to St. Petersburg (renamed as
Fate of the family
After Kamenev's execution, his relatives suffered similar fates. Kamenev's second son, Yu. L. Kamenev was executed on 30 January 1938, at the age of 17. His eldest son,
Notes
- ^ Russian: Лев Борисович Каменев, IPA: [ˈlʲev bɐˈrʲisəvʲɪtɕ ˈkamʲɪnʲɪf] .
- ^ Russian: Ро́зенфельд
References
- ISBN 0-521-79538-9.
- ^ ISBN 0-04-947021-3.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location (link - ^ For a key profile of Kamenev search the AQA Oxford History 'Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917–1953' – Pg 18 "key profile of Lev Borisovich Kamenev"
- ISBN 0-8070-7005-Xp.112
- ^ Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin, p. 262
- ^ David Evans and Jane Jenkins, Years of Russia and the USSR 1851–1991, Hodder Murray, 2001, p.221.
- ^ V. I. Lenin, LETTER TO BOLSHEVIK PARTY MEMBERS
- ISBN 0-253-21430-0p. 70
- ^ FROM THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC LABOUR PARTY (BOLSHEVIKS) by V.I. Lenin, Written on November 5 or 6 (18 or 19), 1917, as published in From V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964 Vol. 26, pp. 303–307.
- ^ "The Lessons of October" Archived 2005-12-27 at the Wayback Machine by Leon Trotsky
- ISBN 978-1-59558-056-6.
- ISBN 978-0-13-097852-3.
- ISBN 978-0-231-06351-7.
- ISBN 978-1-134-80602-7.
- ISBN 978-0-521-36987-9
- ISBN 0-87113-924-3, p.325.
- ISBN 0-19-507132-8(pbk), p. 76.
- ^ ISBN 0-275-95113-8p. 69.
- ^ McSmith. Fear and the Muse. p. 93.
- ^ Bill Keller (14 June 1988). "Court Vindicates 2 Stalin Victims Who Were Close Allies of Lenin's". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 March 2022.
- ^ Geert Mak, In Europa, 2009. Episode "1933, Russia"
Further reading
- Corney, Frederick C., ed. Trotsky's Challenge: The "Literary Discussion" of 1924 and the Fight for the Bolshevik Revolution. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017).
- Debo, Richard Kent. "Litvinov and Kamenev—Ambassadors Extraordinary: The Problem of Soviet Representation Abroad." Slavic Review 34.3 (1975): 463–482. online
- Isaac Deutscher. Stalin: a Political Biography (1949)
- Isaac Deutscher. The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879–1921 (1954)
- Isaac Deutscher. The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929 (1959)
- Haupt, Georges, and Jean-Jacques Marie. Makers of the Russian Revolution: Biographies (Routledge, 2017).
- Kotkin, Stephen. Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2015) excerpt
- Lih, Lars T. "Fully Armed: Kamenev and Pravda in March 1917." The NEP Era: Soviet Russia 1921–1928, 8 (2014), 55–68(2014). online
- Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (2011)
- Pogorelskin, Alexis. "Kamenev and the Peasant Question: The Turn to Opposition, 1924–1925." Russian History 27.4 (2000): 381–395. online
- Rabinowitch, Alexander. Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising (1968).
- Volkogonov, Dmitri. Lenin. A New Biography (1994),
Other languages
- Ulrich, Jürg: Kamenew: Der gemäßigte Bolschewik. Das kollektive Denken im Umfeld Lenins. VSA Verlag, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-89965-206-1.
- "Unpersonen": Wer waren sie wirklich? Bucharin, Rykow, Trotzki, Sinowjew, Kamenew. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-320-01547-8.
External links
- Lev Kamenev Archive at Marxists.org
- Examination of Kamenev during his trial, 20 August 1936.
- Leon Trotsky on Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev
- Newspaper clippings about Lev Kamenev in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW