Galina Iosifovna Serebryakova (russian: Галина Иосифовна Серебрякова; 30 June 1980) was a Polish-Russian writer and
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
survivor.
Family
Serebryakova was the daughter of professional revolutionaries. In childhood, she shared her surname with her mother,
Bronislava Sigismundowna Krasutskaya (Красуцкая), a graduate of the Warsaw academy, who spoke six languages and who was disowned by her father, a Polish tobacco manufacturer, because of her revolutionary activities. Serebryakova's father was , a member of the
Jewish Bund
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia ( yi, אַלגעמײנער ייִדישער אַרבעטער־בונד אין ליטע, פּױלן און רוסלאַנד , translit=Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter-bund in Lite, Poy ...
and medical student at
Warsaw University
The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...
. Both her parents supported the
Bolshevik Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolsheviks, Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was ...
, and served with the Red Army
Russian Civil War
, date = October Revolution, 7 November 1917 – Yakut revolt, 16 June 1923{{Efn, The main phase ended on 25 October 1922. Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued Basmachi movement, in Central Asia and Tungus Republic, the Far East th ...
, including its final stage, the capture of the
Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...
, where their 16-year-old daughter was appointed a commissioner for culture.
At the age of 18, she married
Leonid Serebryakov
Leonid Petrovich Serebryakov (russian: Леонид Петрович Серебряков) (11 June 1890 – 1 February 1937) was a Russian Soviet politician and Bolshevik who became a victim of the Great Purge.
Early life
Born at Samara, the son ...
, and they had a daughter, Zorya, born 1923. Her husband, and her father both signed
The Declaration of the 46 in 1923, and supported
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
in the factional struggle that tore apart the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
"Hymn of the Bolshevik Party"
, headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow
, general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last)
, founded =
, banned =
, founder = Vladimir Lenin
, newspaper ...
after the death of
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
. They were both expelled from the communist party in 1927. There is no record that Serebryakova was anything but a supporter of
Josif Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
. In 1925, she married
Grigori Sokolnikov
Grigori Yakovlevich Sokolnikov (born Hirsch Brilliant or Girsh Yankelevich Brilliant; 1888–1939) was a Russian Old Bolshevik revolutionary, economist, and Soviet politician.
Early career
Grigori Sokolnikov was born Girsh Yankelevich Brillia ...
, a leading opponent of the Trotskyite left, who joined the opposition only briefly in 1926. They had a daughter, Geliana, born in 1934.
Career
In 1920–1925, she studied at the Medical Faculty of Moscow State University, after which she worked in journalism. In the 1920s she began her career as an opera singer: in 1928 she sang at a big radio concert in London, received an invitation to the
Bolshoi Theatre
The Bolshoi Theatre ( rus, Большо́й теа́тр, r=Bol'shoy teatr, literally "Big Theater", p=bɐlʲˈʂoj tʲɪˈatər) is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, originally designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds ballet and ope ...
troupe.. Working as a journalist for ''
Komsomolskaya Pravda
''Komsomolskaya Pravda'' (russian: link=no, Комсомольская правда; lit. "Komsomol Truth") is a daily Russian tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper, founded on 13 March 1925.
History and profile
During the Soviet era, ...
'', she was sent on assignments in China, in 1927, and Geneva and Paris. In 1929, she published a study of the women of the French Revolution. In 1930–32, she joined Sokolnikov in London, where he was the USSR Ambassador, after which she published an account of her time there ''Confrontation: Pictures of English Life.'' The journalist
Malcolm Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) was an English journalist and satirist. His father, H. T. Muggeridge, was a socialist politician and one of the early Labour Party (UK), Labour Party Members of Parliament (for Romfo ...
described meeting her at the country home of
Beatrice Webb
Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, (née Potter; 22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943) was an English sociologist, economist, socialist, labour historian and social reformer. It was Webb who coined the term ''collective bargaining''. She ...
:
Her most ambitious project was a three-volume fictionalised life of Karl Marx. The first volume, ''The Young Marx'' was published in 1934–35.
Arrest
Serebryakova's husband, Grigori Sokolnikov, and her father, Iosif Moiseyevich Byk-Bek, were both arrested early in the
Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...
of July 1936, and her ex-husband, Leonid Serebryakov, was arrested in August. Sokolnikov and Serebryakov were defendants at the second of the
Moscow Trials
The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of th ...
in January 1937. This left her exposed. On 27 August 1936, the secretary of the
Union of Soviet Writers
The Union of Soviet Writers, USSR Union of Writers, or Soviet Union of Writers (russian: Союз писателей СССР, translit=Soyuz Sovetstikh Pisatelei) was a creative union of professional writers in the Soviet Union. It was founded ...
,
Vladimir Stavsky
Vladimir Petrovich Stavsky (Владимир Петрович Ставский; born Kirpichnikov, Кирпичников; 30 July 1900 – 14 November 1943) was a Soviet Russian writer, editor (in 1937–1941, of ''Novy Mir'') and literary admin ...
announced her expulsion from the union in the magazine ''
Literaturnaya Gazeta
''Literaturnaya Gazeta'' (russian: «Литературная Газета», ''Literary Gazette'') is a weekly cultural and political newspaper published in Russia and the Soviet Union. It was published for two periods in the 19th century, and ...
'', warning: "We accepted her as a comrade and did not recognise the enemy in her...Many evenings were devoted to discussion of Serebryakova's works. We served the enemy with our own hands..." She then endured months of harassment by the
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
, which included being invited to the
Lubyanka Building
The Lubyanka ( rus, Лубянка, p=lʊˈbʲankə) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Ne ...
for interrogation every evening, and kept there until five in the morning. Her house was also under watch, and a car followed her whenever she went out. Aware of her impending arrest, she unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide. After several months, she was arrested and deported in June 1937 to
Semipalantinsk with her mother and two-year-old daughter. Arrested again in December 1937, she was sentenced in 1939 to eight years in the
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
. Released in 1945, she settled in
Dzhambul
Taraz ( kz, Тараз, تاراز, translit=Taraz ; known to Europeans as Talas) is a city and the administrative center of Jambyl Region in Kazakhstan, located on the Talas (Taraz) River in the south of the country near the border with Kyrgyzs ...
, but was arrested again in May 1949, she was sentenced to 10 years in the Gulag. She was released in 1955.
Later career
Serebryakova's convictions were overturned after
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
had denounced Stalin's crimes at the 20th party congress in 1956, and she was able to return to Moscow and resume work on her life of Marx. The second volume appeared in 1961, and the third volume in 1962. The completed novel was turned into a film, ''A Year is a Like a Lifetime'' (1965) for which she persuaded the Soviet Union's greatest composer,
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throug ...
, to write the music. She had known the composer since the 1920s, when - according to the controversial writer,
Solomon Volkov
Solomon Moiseyevich Volkov (russian: Соломон Моисеевич Волков; born 17 April 1944) is a Russian journalist and musicologist. He is best known for ''Testimony'', which was published in 1979 following his emigration from the So ...
, they were lovers. Other biographers of Shostakovich describe them simply as close friends. He regretted accepting this assignment and considered it a failure.
She also wrote an account of her imprisonment and exile, ''Smerch'' (Whirlwind), which could not be published in the Soviet Union. It first appeared in an emigre journal in Paris, in 1967, and was published in Russia, posthumously, in 2005.
In 1961, Serebryakova announced in ''
Pravda
''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the co ...
'' that during her long imprisonment she did not "lose faith in our Leninist party or in the all-conquering teaching of Marx and Lenin". This made her an important ally of the party leader
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
, both against hard line communists who resented his denunciation of
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
, and liberals who wanted more liberalisation of the communist regime. On 17 December 1962, she participated in a meeting of 400 representatives of the arts, in the presence of Khrushchev and other party leaders, and launched an attack on the writer
Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (russian: link=no, Илья́ Григо́рьевич Эренбу́рг, ; – August 31, 1967) was a Soviet writer, revolutionary, journalist and historian.
Ehrenburg was among the most prolific and notable autho ...
, who was leading the campaign for more liberalisation, accusing him of having acted as 'Stalin's mouthpiece', and suggested that he had caused the deaths of members of the
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, ''Yevreysky antifashistsky komitet'' yi, יידישער אנטי פאשיסטישער קאמיטעט, ''Yidisher anti fashistisher komitet''., abbreviated as JAC, ''YeAK'', was an organization that was created i ...
in 1948–52. This outburst was excluded from the published record of the meeting.
This appears to have been the occasion when, according to Volkov:
On 17 April 1964, she was of the speakers at a banquet in the Kremlin to celebrate Khrushchev's 70th birthday, and hailed him as "one of the truly superior men of our time...The whole world knows and honours him. It is difficult to imagine a simpler, more approachable, more cheerful man...one of the most original and outstanding orators of our time..."
Her support for Khrushchev aroused the hostility and contempt of other Gulag survivors, such as the Nobel laureate
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...
, who described her as a "loud mouth", and alleged that she enjoyed a privileged status in the Gulag by being allowed to work as a nurse, though she had no medical training. He also hinted at rumours that she was an informant, though added: "I did not have the opportunity of checking this." According to her daughter, Geliana, in the last five years of her life Serebryakova was "offended by the Writers' Union, for spreading rumors and gossip" and suffered physically and mentally as a result.
She died in 1980.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Serebryakova, Galina
1905 births
1980 deaths
Soviet women writers
Russian women
20th-century women writers
Communist women writers
Russian prisoners and detainees