Jacob Blumkin: provocateur, editor, spy (part three)
However, even before graduation, Blumkin had many different interesting adventures - both in the territory of the Russian Federation and abroad! For example, for some reason, Blumkin tried to get into the Union of anarchist maximalists. But before taking him there, they demanded that he be justified before a party court, which included representatives of a number of parties. The court was headed by A. Karelin - the leader of Russian communist anarchists, and, by the way, was a former member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR. And what is interesting, Blumkin was tried for two weeks, but they did not take any concrete decision. Many continued to consider him a traitor and practically admitted that he was a provocateur. That is, for as many as two weeks, none of the circumstances that had defamed him could be clarified. Astonishing unprofessionalism, isn't it? Or, on the contrary, there was nothing to clarify, but all the circumstances were such that it was better to leave everything as it was. Obviously, something prevented the court to do what he should have done. And here is the question - what exactly?
Blumkin did not live in misery even with money, so he could afford to spend time in the Moscow Poet's Café, where he often paid for non-cash poets. In which a lot of interesting things happened. Drunken Yesenin arranged fights there, Mayakovsky admired aloud Makhno's father, in a word, if they wanted, they could all at least have something to “sew”. But ... not sewn.
Dead Yesenin. The mark on the forehead from the impact is clearly visible. Perhaps, without all the same Blumkin and there was a cost? ..
The poet Vladislav Khodasevich then once recalled that there was a case when Yesenin, trying to capture the imagination of bohemian ladies and nodding at Blumkin, boasted that he could easily arrange for her to “tour” in the Cheka, to show “how they shoot him in the basement”. Well, poets ate and drank with his money quite often too, and how could you not take it from this neophyte, after all, they were masters ?! Blumkin several times rescued Yesenin and some other poets, and their relatives from the Cheka, and even somehow composedhistorical a document ”in which he wrote that he“ bails Citizen Yesenin and personally guarantees that he will not hide before the trial and investigation ... ”That is, he provided him with obvious protection ... until a certain time.
And then, a year before his suicide, while in Tbilisi, Blumkin jealous of Yesenin to his wife, and was so jealous that he began to threaten him weapons. Yesenin had to urgently get out of there. But when he was in Leningrad at the end of December 1925, then ... he immediately committed suicide at the Angletert hotel. However, St. Petersburg writer V. Kuznetsov proved that Yesenin never lived in this hotel, since his data are not in the guests' book, and this in Soviet hotels was simply impossible. In the death of the poet there is also a mass of absurdities that have not received a proper explanation, starting with abrasions on the forehead and items of clothing not found in “his number”, and, in particular, his jacket. According to Kuznetsov, as soon as Yesenin appeared in Leningrad, he was immediately arrested and taken to the investigatory home of the GPU on Mayorov Street, 8 \ 25, where the KGB was interrogated with addiction ... yes, yes, Yakov Blyumkin, and then they killed him there. And only then dead Yesenin, they dragged into the hotel, where there was an empty room. Even Yesenin's death poems may not have been written by himself, but Blumkin himself, who, as we know, was also a bit of a poet ... And all this “suicide” could also be another provocation, especially if you remember what Yesenin wrote poems about Soviet power and how he “painted” it with colors. In addition, he also allowed himself extremely harsh attacks on the members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (B), and described the "legendary" Civil War as "vile and savage wildness" that killed thousands of wonderful talents in Russia:
In them, Pushkin,
Lermontov,
Rings,
And our Nekrasov in them.
In them I am.
They even Trotsky,
Lenin and Bukharin.
Not because of my sadness
Blowing verse
Looking at them
Unwashed hari.
This is about Lenin, isn't it? Leader of the world revolution! Ah-ah! No respect! And it's a shame as it is written, isn't it? “Unwashed Hari” This is after all a hint of a swarthy complexion, not otherwise ... So knowing the character of Trotsky, the fate of Yesenin is not particularly surprising. And, by the way, Yesenin could not help but realize that he could expect him for such verses about “unwashed haris” by the leaders of the “first world revolution of the workers and peasants”. And not without reason, he seemed to have a premonition of his demise, since he wrote this:
And the first
I need to hang
Arms crossed behind me
For being a song
Hoarse and single
I made it difficult for me to sleep in my native country ...
Well, that was him, poor fellow, and they hung him up, and then Trotsky himself wrote a worthy obituary about him in Pravda. But the obituary is nothing more than words, and the main thing is when there is no person. After all, there are no problems with him either, and sometimes even with the poets, the masters have to be considered.
However, let’s return to our “hero”, who was a little earlier, namely in 1920, was also sent to northern Iran, on a very important and political matter. There at that time the Gilan Soviet Republic was proclaimed. And the Kremlin leaders would be happy that the proletarian revolution also began in Iran, but the problem arose from the fact that at the head of the Council of People's Commissars there was a certain Kuchuk Khan, a man who held nationalist positions. And was supposed to be an internationalist. So it took here in Gilan only to “change the power”, which was done under the guidance of the very experienced Jacob Blumkin in such matters. The old government was overthrown and replaced with a new one headed by Ehsanullah, also a khan, but his own, a correct orientation, which was supported by the local left and, most importantly, by the communists and Moscow.
Now Blumkin is already the commissar of the headquarters of the Gilan Red Army, and a member of the young Iranian Communist Party, and defends the city of Enzeli from the troops of the Shah of Iran. As a delegate from Iran, it was he who arrived in Baku for the First Congress of the oppressed peoples of the East. That is, another delegate to him was "his man" and said the right words there. At that, his “exotic business trip” ended. After four months in the East, Blumkin was again recalled to Moscow.
It is not even clear how Blumkin studied at the academy at all, since he was constantly forced to interrupt his studies and go to various important “hot spots”. So, at the end of 1920, he goes to the Crimea, where another unpleasant situation was created for the Soviet authorities. There, the Red Army surrendered and then “registered” many thousands of White Guard officers, who personally commander-in-chief Mikhail Frunze promised to save his life. However, Trotsky took the Soviet government to fear, stating that "forty thousand evil enemies of the revolution" are simply dangerous for Soviet Russia, and, thus, achieved a decision to destroy them.
Such "experts" as Bela Kun, Zemlyachka and, of course, Blumkin, drove the "process" from Moscow. The latter was there only a few weeks, but he actively participated in mass executions, than he later boasted to his acquaintances more than once. Then, according to various sources, thousands of people were destroyed from 50 to 100. Then, fulfilling Trotsky's decree, more than 20 thousands were executed only in Sevastopol and Balaklava. After all, he said that “Crimea is a bottle from which not a single counterrevolutionary will jump out,” so they all remained there.
In 1921, Blumkin had the opportunity to participate in the suppression of the actions of the peasants, who were qualified by the workers' and peasants as “political banditry”. In the list of his achievements in this field is the suppression of the Yelansky uprising in the Lower Volga region, and then participation in the defeat of the Antonov gangs in the Tambov region. Well, and then as a brigade of the 61 th brigade, Blumkin goes to fight with the troops of the "yellow baron" Ungern. But then he was immediately made secretary to L. Trotsky, which was surprised to find out the new German ambassador to the USSR.
The German embassy decided to get from the Soviet authorities, if not punishment, then at least, condemn both the murder and the one who committed it. But Trotsky wrote a letter to Lenin, as well as to other members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, in which he suggested simply not paying attention to the "stupid demands of satisfaction for Count Mirbach". And the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR, Chicherin, received from him friendly advice to persuade the Germans not to do this, since, they say, this impedes the new Russian-German rapprochement.
Boris Bazhanov, Stalin’s secretary who managed to flee abroad, later wrote that Blumkin had clearly come to Trotsky “for a reason,” and that the Cheka had him assigned to him. But in the same year 1921 F. Dzerzhinsky did not work for Stalin yet, but rather, he just supported Trotsky. And here is the question - why did “Iron Felix” need to follow the “party comrades”? Just because “the Cheka should know everything” or did it have any personal motives of its own?
In 1922, Blumkin became the official adjutant and secretary of Trotsky, who immediately instructed him to carry out a highly responsible task: to edit the first volume of his program book “How the Armed Revolution” (1923 edition of the year), which collected the richest material during the civil war, and which is either accidental, or reflecting the real state of affairs ... it was Trotsky who was the organizer of all the victories of the revolution. And Jacob Blumkin was involved in editing, compiling and checking materials.
It is interesting that this situation even amused Trotsky himself. In any case, he wrote about his work in his office, which supposedly was such a strange fate for this man: in July 1918 fights against us, but today he is a member of our party, he is my employee, and he edits volume that reflects our deadly struggle with the party of the Left Social Revolutionaries. And indeed - amazing metamorphosis gives us life. Today for some, tomorrow for others. However, on the other hand, everything is in the Bible. Recall the prophet Ecclesiastes, who said that a living dog is better than a dead lion. And so it happens in life most often.
Well, since 1923, the period of the most fascinating adventures of Jacob Blumkin began, only the information about them is still closed in secret archives and when their content becomes public knowledge is unknown. It would seem, what is easier - to take, and to gather in one place all the cases where his name is mentioned, come and work, gentlemen researchers, separate, so to speak, the wheat from the chaff, but ... everything has a hitch with us. And the Bolsheviks are long gone, and the USSR itself rested in the Bose, and historians still have only to guess about many moments in the life of the spy terrorist Yakov Blumkin.
Well, we should start here with the fact that Grigori Zinoviev himself, who headed the Comintern at that time, asked Blumkin to help in an important matter: once again to organize a revolution in Weimar Germany. Moreover, he was only required to instruct the "German comrades" in the field of subversion and terror. He did the work, but nothing happened to Germany, and Blumkin went to the Foreign Department of the OGPU, where he became a resident of his Eastern sector, and began work, receiving the nicknames "Jack" and "Live." The foreign spy's career, Blumkin, took place in Palestine, where in the city of Jaffa, having documents in his hands on the name of the orthodox Jew Gurfinkel, he opened a laundry room. What he did there is unknown, but he only worked there for a year, then returned to Moscow. However, the benefits of his trip, of course, was. Here in Palestine, Blumkin met with German Leopold Trepper. They met, and how this acquaintance ended does not even know the "all-knowing" Wikipedia. However, after all, it was Trepper who in the future turned out to be the leader of the famous “Red Chapel” and the Soviet intelligence network in Nazi Germany. So they certainly spoke about something “such” there ...
After Palestine, as a political representative of the OGPU, he again goes to Tbilisi, where he becomes an assistant to the commander of the OGPU troops in the South Caucasus and at the same time authorized by the Commissariat of Foreign Trade in combating smuggling. And here he too has to smell gunpowder: suppress the peasant uprising and liberate the city of Bagram-Tepe, which the Iranians seized in 1922 year. He had to work in the border commissions to resolve various controversial issues that occasionally arose at that time between the USSR, Turkey, Iran.
Being in the South Caucasus and knowing Eastern languages, Blumkin managed to visit Afghanistan, where he tried to get in touch with the Ismaili sect (descendants of ancient assassins), in whom the Bolsheviks wanted to see their direct allies in the fight against the English colonialists. He then traveled to India, where he studied the position of the British colonial troops and even traveled to Ceylon. He returned to Moscow only in the 1925 year, and he brought various Eastern "antiques" to his apartment and played out in front of friends and acquaintances of a certain Eastern guru.
To be continued ...
Blumkin did not live in misery even with money, so he could afford to spend time in the Moscow Poet's Café, where he often paid for non-cash poets. In which a lot of interesting things happened. Drunken Yesenin arranged fights there, Mayakovsky admired aloud Makhno's father, in a word, if they wanted, they could all at least have something to “sew”. But ... not sewn.
Dead Yesenin. The mark on the forehead from the impact is clearly visible. Perhaps, without all the same Blumkin and there was a cost? ..
The poet Vladislav Khodasevich then once recalled that there was a case when Yesenin, trying to capture the imagination of bohemian ladies and nodding at Blumkin, boasted that he could easily arrange for her to “tour” in the Cheka, to show “how they shoot him in the basement”. Well, poets ate and drank with his money quite often too, and how could you not take it from this neophyte, after all, they were masters ?! Blumkin several times rescued Yesenin and some other poets, and their relatives from the Cheka, and even somehow composedhistorical a document ”in which he wrote that he“ bails Citizen Yesenin and personally guarantees that he will not hide before the trial and investigation ... ”That is, he provided him with obvious protection ... until a certain time.
And then, a year before his suicide, while in Tbilisi, Blumkin jealous of Yesenin to his wife, and was so jealous that he began to threaten him weapons. Yesenin had to urgently get out of there. But when he was in Leningrad at the end of December 1925, then ... he immediately committed suicide at the Angletert hotel. However, St. Petersburg writer V. Kuznetsov proved that Yesenin never lived in this hotel, since his data are not in the guests' book, and this in Soviet hotels was simply impossible. In the death of the poet there is also a mass of absurdities that have not received a proper explanation, starting with abrasions on the forehead and items of clothing not found in “his number”, and, in particular, his jacket. According to Kuznetsov, as soon as Yesenin appeared in Leningrad, he was immediately arrested and taken to the investigatory home of the GPU on Mayorov Street, 8 \ 25, where the KGB was interrogated with addiction ... yes, yes, Yakov Blyumkin, and then they killed him there. And only then dead Yesenin, they dragged into the hotel, where there was an empty room. Even Yesenin's death poems may not have been written by himself, but Blumkin himself, who, as we know, was also a bit of a poet ... And all this “suicide” could also be another provocation, especially if you remember what Yesenin wrote poems about Soviet power and how he “painted” it with colors. In addition, he also allowed himself extremely harsh attacks on the members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (B), and described the "legendary" Civil War as "vile and savage wildness" that killed thousands of wonderful talents in Russia:
In them, Pushkin,
Lermontov,
Rings,
And our Nekrasov in them.
In them I am.
They even Trotsky,
Lenin and Bukharin.
Not because of my sadness
Blowing verse
Looking at them
Unwashed hari.
This is about Lenin, isn't it? Leader of the world revolution! Ah-ah! No respect! And it's a shame as it is written, isn't it? “Unwashed Hari” This is after all a hint of a swarthy complexion, not otherwise ... So knowing the character of Trotsky, the fate of Yesenin is not particularly surprising. And, by the way, Yesenin could not help but realize that he could expect him for such verses about “unwashed haris” by the leaders of the “first world revolution of the workers and peasants”. And not without reason, he seemed to have a premonition of his demise, since he wrote this:
And the first
I need to hang
Arms crossed behind me
For being a song
Hoarse and single
I made it difficult for me to sleep in my native country ...
Well, that was him, poor fellow, and they hung him up, and then Trotsky himself wrote a worthy obituary about him in Pravda. But the obituary is nothing more than words, and the main thing is when there is no person. After all, there are no problems with him either, and sometimes even with the poets, the masters have to be considered.
However, let’s return to our “hero”, who was a little earlier, namely in 1920, was also sent to northern Iran, on a very important and political matter. There at that time the Gilan Soviet Republic was proclaimed. And the Kremlin leaders would be happy that the proletarian revolution also began in Iran, but the problem arose from the fact that at the head of the Council of People's Commissars there was a certain Kuchuk Khan, a man who held nationalist positions. And was supposed to be an internationalist. So it took here in Gilan only to “change the power”, which was done under the guidance of the very experienced Jacob Blumkin in such matters. The old government was overthrown and replaced with a new one headed by Ehsanullah, also a khan, but his own, a correct orientation, which was supported by the local left and, most importantly, by the communists and Moscow.
Now Blumkin is already the commissar of the headquarters of the Gilan Red Army, and a member of the young Iranian Communist Party, and defends the city of Enzeli from the troops of the Shah of Iran. As a delegate from Iran, it was he who arrived in Baku for the First Congress of the oppressed peoples of the East. That is, another delegate to him was "his man" and said the right words there. At that, his “exotic business trip” ended. After four months in the East, Blumkin was again recalled to Moscow.
It is not even clear how Blumkin studied at the academy at all, since he was constantly forced to interrupt his studies and go to various important “hot spots”. So, at the end of 1920, he goes to the Crimea, where another unpleasant situation was created for the Soviet authorities. There, the Red Army surrendered and then “registered” many thousands of White Guard officers, who personally commander-in-chief Mikhail Frunze promised to save his life. However, Trotsky took the Soviet government to fear, stating that "forty thousand evil enemies of the revolution" are simply dangerous for Soviet Russia, and, thus, achieved a decision to destroy them.
Such "experts" as Bela Kun, Zemlyachka and, of course, Blumkin, drove the "process" from Moscow. The latter was there only a few weeks, but he actively participated in mass executions, than he later boasted to his acquaintances more than once. Then, according to various sources, thousands of people were destroyed from 50 to 100. Then, fulfilling Trotsky's decree, more than 20 thousands were executed only in Sevastopol and Balaklava. After all, he said that “Crimea is a bottle from which not a single counterrevolutionary will jump out,” so they all remained there.
In 1921, Blumkin had the opportunity to participate in the suppression of the actions of the peasants, who were qualified by the workers' and peasants as “political banditry”. In the list of his achievements in this field is the suppression of the Yelansky uprising in the Lower Volga region, and then participation in the defeat of the Antonov gangs in the Tambov region. Well, and then as a brigade of the 61 th brigade, Blumkin goes to fight with the troops of the "yellow baron" Ungern. But then he was immediately made secretary to L. Trotsky, which was surprised to find out the new German ambassador to the USSR.
The German embassy decided to get from the Soviet authorities, if not punishment, then at least, condemn both the murder and the one who committed it. But Trotsky wrote a letter to Lenin, as well as to other members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, in which he suggested simply not paying attention to the "stupid demands of satisfaction for Count Mirbach". And the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR, Chicherin, received from him friendly advice to persuade the Germans not to do this, since, they say, this impedes the new Russian-German rapprochement.
Boris Bazhanov, Stalin’s secretary who managed to flee abroad, later wrote that Blumkin had clearly come to Trotsky “for a reason,” and that the Cheka had him assigned to him. But in the same year 1921 F. Dzerzhinsky did not work for Stalin yet, but rather, he just supported Trotsky. And here is the question - why did “Iron Felix” need to follow the “party comrades”? Just because “the Cheka should know everything” or did it have any personal motives of its own?
In 1922, Blumkin became the official adjutant and secretary of Trotsky, who immediately instructed him to carry out a highly responsible task: to edit the first volume of his program book “How the Armed Revolution” (1923 edition of the year), which collected the richest material during the civil war, and which is either accidental, or reflecting the real state of affairs ... it was Trotsky who was the organizer of all the victories of the revolution. And Jacob Blumkin was involved in editing, compiling and checking materials.
It is interesting that this situation even amused Trotsky himself. In any case, he wrote about his work in his office, which supposedly was such a strange fate for this man: in July 1918 fights against us, but today he is a member of our party, he is my employee, and he edits volume that reflects our deadly struggle with the party of the Left Social Revolutionaries. And indeed - amazing metamorphosis gives us life. Today for some, tomorrow for others. However, on the other hand, everything is in the Bible. Recall the prophet Ecclesiastes, who said that a living dog is better than a dead lion. And so it happens in life most often.
Well, since 1923, the period of the most fascinating adventures of Jacob Blumkin began, only the information about them is still closed in secret archives and when their content becomes public knowledge is unknown. It would seem, what is easier - to take, and to gather in one place all the cases where his name is mentioned, come and work, gentlemen researchers, separate, so to speak, the wheat from the chaff, but ... everything has a hitch with us. And the Bolsheviks are long gone, and the USSR itself rested in the Bose, and historians still have only to guess about many moments in the life of the spy terrorist Yakov Blumkin.
Well, we should start here with the fact that Grigori Zinoviev himself, who headed the Comintern at that time, asked Blumkin to help in an important matter: once again to organize a revolution in Weimar Germany. Moreover, he was only required to instruct the "German comrades" in the field of subversion and terror. He did the work, but nothing happened to Germany, and Blumkin went to the Foreign Department of the OGPU, where he became a resident of his Eastern sector, and began work, receiving the nicknames "Jack" and "Live." The foreign spy's career, Blumkin, took place in Palestine, where in the city of Jaffa, having documents in his hands on the name of the orthodox Jew Gurfinkel, he opened a laundry room. What he did there is unknown, but he only worked there for a year, then returned to Moscow. However, the benefits of his trip, of course, was. Here in Palestine, Blumkin met with German Leopold Trepper. They met, and how this acquaintance ended does not even know the "all-knowing" Wikipedia. However, after all, it was Trepper who in the future turned out to be the leader of the famous “Red Chapel” and the Soviet intelligence network in Nazi Germany. So they certainly spoke about something “such” there ...
After Palestine, as a political representative of the OGPU, he again goes to Tbilisi, where he becomes an assistant to the commander of the OGPU troops in the South Caucasus and at the same time authorized by the Commissariat of Foreign Trade in combating smuggling. And here he too has to smell gunpowder: suppress the peasant uprising and liberate the city of Bagram-Tepe, which the Iranians seized in 1922 year. He had to work in the border commissions to resolve various controversial issues that occasionally arose at that time between the USSR, Turkey, Iran.
Being in the South Caucasus and knowing Eastern languages, Blumkin managed to visit Afghanistan, where he tried to get in touch with the Ismaili sect (descendants of ancient assassins), in whom the Bolsheviks wanted to see their direct allies in the fight against the English colonialists. He then traveled to India, where he studied the position of the British colonial troops and even traveled to Ceylon. He returned to Moscow only in the 1925 year, and he brought various Eastern "antiques" to his apartment and played out in front of friends and acquaintances of a certain Eastern guru.
To be continued ...
- V. Shpakovsky
- Jacob Blumkin: poet-SR, KGB terrorist (part one)
Jacob Blumkin: poet-SR, KGB terrorist (part two)
Information