Revolutionary Grigory Petrovsky: biography, achievements, awards and interesting facts

Grigory Petrovsky was a talented manager, a supporter of the socialist idea. His personality is difficult to call successful, it is rather tragic. He was able to pass links, prisons, repressions, but could not stand the test of the totalitarian regime.

At the end of his life, he managed to hear Nikita Khrushchev's report, see changes in the state's policy.

Ninety years ago his name was part of the "complex name" of the city, which for a long time was a symbol of the Soviet era.

early years

In the light of Grigory Petrovsky appeared on 23.01.1878. It happened in the village of Pechenegi, Kharkov province, in the family of a washerwoman and a tailor. In total, three children grew up in the family. His father died early, leaving Gregory at the age of three. When the young man turned fourteen years old, the family moved in the hope of a better life in Ekaterinoslav (the present Dnieper).

At school at the theological seminary, the boy studied for a little more than two years. He was expelled due to his inability to pay for training. The family did not have five rubles for the fee. So much at that time was worth the cow. At the age of eleven he started working in the workshops with the railway. By the age of fifteen, he settled for the Bryansk Metallurgical Plant.

Revolutionary activity until 1917

Working in Ekaterinoslav, Petrovsky joined the "Union of Struggle". Since 1898, he became a member of the RSDLP. Seven years later he was appointed secretary of the Soviet of Workers in the city on the Dnieper.

During his revolutionary activities, Grigory Petrovsky was imprisoned three times:

• In 1900;
• In 1903;
• In 1914 he was arrested and convicted, depriving all rights and sent to a life-long settlement.

He spent some time in exile.

From 1912 to 1914 Petrovsky was in the Duma. During this time he delivered thirty-two speeches. Among his speeches, the topic was raised about the creation of Ukrainian schools, the admission of the Ukrainian language in administrative institutions, the possibility of carrying out its activities to Ukrainian cultural and educational organizations.

The reference of the revolutionary figure was first held in the Turukhansk region, and from 1916 in Yakutia. After the revolution of 1917, he was released.

Activities after the February Revolution

Having freed himself, Grigory Petrovsky became the commissioner of Yakutia, and after a couple of months he was sent to the Donbass by the party.

Positions held:

• Member of the RSDLP (b) in Yekaterinoslav;
• Member of the Pre-Parliament;
• People's Commissar for Internal Affairs of the RSFSR;
• One of the creators of the Cheka;
• Participant in the negotiations on the Brest Peace;
• Signed an order on the Red Terror;
• Presided in the All-Ukrainian CEC;
• On behalf of the Ukrainian SSR signed the Treaty on Education throughout the Union;
• Occupied other important posts in the Comintern.

Petrovsky belonged to those representatives of the party apparatus, which were guided in everything by Moscow. He rejected the possibility of creating a separate Ukrainian Soviet state. In 1922 he supported the Stalin project on the creation of the RSFSR with the republics included in it on the rights of autonomy. He did not support the position of Skrypnik, Rakovsky, Shumsky, who sought to create a union state with a confederal bias.

In 1932, Petrovsky was sent to the Donetsk region as responsible for the implementation of grain procurement. That is why his name appears in the question of the involvement in the genocide of the Ukrainian people. Do they consider him one of the perpetrators of the death of a million Ukrainians?

Petrovsky Grigory Ivanovich and the Holodomor

Being responsible for grain procurement in 1932, Petrovsky saw a real situation in the villages of Ukraine. He wrote a letter to Molotov and Stalin, in which he reported on the famine and asked for help for the Ukrainian village. He did not want death to people, but he did nothing except write a letter.

Modern historians are not inclined to believe that Grigory Petrovsky (Holodomor 1932-1933) was involved in the genocide of Ukrainians. He, on the contrary, asked to issue a decree on the termination of grain procurement in Ukraine.

Despite this behavior, he was not removed from office. Grigory Petrovsky (the Holodomor was the worst time for him, as for the entire Ukrainian people) escaped the repressions of the thirties of the twentieth century. On the contrary, he was appointed to various posts in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. This continued until 1938.

Years in an honorific link

Grigory Petrovsky, whose biography is associated with the creation of the USSR, was removed from all posts because of connivance with "enemies of the people." For a long time he remained without work. Stalin long wanted to displace Petrovsky, who was too soft for him, but did not dare because of the great authority of the leader of the eastern Ukrainian SSR. He was removed from the leadership position only in 1938 under the pretext of raising in Moscow. But in the capital, he could not get a job for two years because of Stalin's secret order. His family was forced to interrupt "on bread and water."

Fyodor Samoilov, a deputy for deputy work, helped him. In 1940, he arranged Petrovsky in the Museum of the Revolution. Stalin's former comrade-in-arms began to work as a steward. He managed to get this post, because she did not require that she be coordinated in the Central Committee.

last years of life

After the death of Stalin, Grigory Petrovsky, whose biography is connected with the Red Terror, again returned to social activities. He acted with his memories before the audience, engaged in journalism. He became an honored guest at the famous XX Congress of the CPSU, which debunked the "cult of the personality of Stalin."

At the same time he continued to work in the Museum of the Revolution until his death, which occurred on January 9, 1958. It happened in Moscow, where his ashes were buried in the Kremlin wall. What happened to the children of a politician who, since 1938, was in honorable exile?

Family destroyed by the party

With his first wife Dominika Fedorovna Petrovsky Grigory Ivanovich met while still working at the plant in Yekaterinoslav. She helped him by printing leaflets for May Day. They said that people should work eight hours, sleep eight hours, rest for eight hours. They lived to the death of his wife, who was not at the beginning of the Patriotic War.

Children of Petrovsky:

• Leonid - was a Soviet military leader, until he was expelled from the party on the eve of the Great Patriotic War. He died in battle in 1941.
• Peter - was a statesman, one of those who stormed the Winter Palace, in 1938 he was arrested, and in 1941 they were shot by representatives of the NKVD.
• Antonina - was married to the son of the famous Ukrainian writer Yuri Kotsyubinsky, then to party worker Solomon Zager. Both men were repressed in 1937, the same year Kotsiubynsky's son was shot.

Petrovsky wrote letters to top management more than once to save his children and their families. But his requests were not heard. The sons were rehabilitated only after Stalin's death. By this time they had long ago rested in the land and did not need rehabilitation.

City Dnepropetrovsk

Over the years of his work, Grigory Ivanovich Petrovsky, whose biography is associated with the Ukrainian SSR, received six Orders:

• Lenin (twice);
• The Red Banner ;
• The Red Banner of Labor (three times).

His life is closely connected with the city of Yekaterinoslav, in which he began to live from a young age. His political activities began here. When in power, Petrovsky came to visit him every year. Since 1938 in Moscow, he was able to visit the city on the Dnieper River only in 1957.

He was invited to the seventieth anniversary of a factory bearing the name of Petrovsky. At that time, the "all-Ukrainian elder" was seventy-nine years old. He delivered a speech at the Ilyich Palace, visited the plant, talked to the workers.

Since 1926 the city of his youth has received the name Dnepropetrovsk. The statesman himself was not pleased with this honor. An interesting fact is that most of the modern residents of the city believed that the name is not associated with Petrovsky, but with Peter the Great.

In addition to the city, in honor of the policy were named and other settlements, as well as streets, factories, railway station, parks.

Attitude of contemporaries

Grigory Petrovsky (revolutionary) became an unwanted representative of the past. His monument in Dnepropetrovsk (Dnepr) was thrown off by a group of activists on January 29, 2016. The city itself was renamed on May 19, 2013 in the Dnieper. The region itself can not be renamed, since its name is enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine.

Such is the biography of a man who until the end could not fit into the ruling regime, in the construction of which he took direct part. The policy managed to survive the "cleansing" of the thirties, but for this he had to pay a very high price - survive the death of his sons and wives, fall from the political Olympus, for many years to live in semi-oblivion.