![Ganecky](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Ganecky.jpg)
Yakov Hanecki (known in Russia as Yakov Stanislavovich Ganetsky - Яков Станиславович Ганецкий), real name Jakub Fürstenberg (Fuerstenberg) also known as Kuba (15 March 1879 — 26 November 1937) was a prominent Polish communist and close associate 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 ...
,
[russian: Залесский К.А. Империя Сталина. Биографический энциклопедический словарь. Москва, Вече, 2000 (Zalesskiy K.A. Stalin's Empire. Biographical encyclopedic dictionary. Moscow, Meeting, 2000)] famous as one of the financial wizards who arranged, through his close working relationship with
Alexander Parvus
Alexander Lvovich Parvus, born Israel Lazarevich Gelfand (8 September 1867 – 12 December 1924) and sometimes called Helphand in the literature on the Russian Revolution, was a Marxist theoretician, publicist, and controversial activist in the ...
, the secret German funding that helped the
Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
seize power in the
October 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 Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...
of 1917 - after which he served as a middle ranking Soviet official until his arrest.
Early career
Yakov Hanecki was born in
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
,
Vistula Land
Vistula Land, Vistula Country (russian: Привислинский край, ''Privislinsky krai''; pl, Kraj Nadwiślański) was the name applied to the lands of Congress Poland from 1867, following the defeats of the November Uprising (1830–3 ...
,
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
, the son of Stanislav von Fürstenberg, a beer manufacturer of German-Jewish descent, who had adopted Poland as his homeland. In 1896 he joined the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP - later the
Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania
The Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania ( pl, Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy, SDKPiL), , LKLSD), originally the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), was a Marxist political party founded in 1893 and ...
(SDKPiL)) led by
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg (; ; pl, Róża Luksemburg or ; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary socialist, Marxist philosopher and anti-war activist. Successively, she was a member of the Proletariat party, ...
and her lover,
Leo Jogiches
Leon "Leo" Jogiches (Russian: Лев "Лео" Йогихес; 17 July 1867 – 10 March 1919), also commonly known by the party name Jan Tyszka, was a Polish Marxist revolutionary and politician, active in Poland, Lithuania, and Germany.
Jogiche ...
. He moved to
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
in 1901 and studied in rapid succession at
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
,
Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
, and
Zurich universities. From 1902, he was a professional revolutionary, normally based in
Cracow, under Austrian rule, organising the transport of illegal literature across the Russian border. In August 1903, as a member of the Main Administration of the SDKPiL, he was one of two Polish delegates to the
Second Congress of the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; in , ''Rossiyskaya sotsial-demokraticheskaya rabochaya partiya (RSDRP)''), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party, was a socialist pol ...
(RSDLP) in Brussels. The Congress later adjourned to London, under pressure from the Belgian police, and there the RSDLP split into its Bolshevik and
Menshevik
The Mensheviks (russian: меньшевики́, from меньшинство 'minority') were one of the three dominant factions in the Russian socialist movement, the others being the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
The factions eme ...
factions, but Hanecki and the other Polish delegate,
Adolf Warski
Adolf Warski (born Adolf Jerzy Warszawski; 20 April 1868 – 21 August 1937), was a Polish communist leader, journalist and theoretician of the communist movement in Poland.
Warski was born in Warsaw into an assimilated Polish Jewish family ...
, did not make the journey to London, having failed to agree terms on which the RSDLP and SDKPiL could collaborate.
At the outbreak of the
1905 revolution
The Russian Revolution of 1905,. also known as the First Russian Revolution,. occurred on 22 January 1905, and was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. The mass unrest was directed again ...
, Hanecki returned illegally to Warsaw, with
Felix Dzerzhinsky
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky ( pl, Feliks Dzierżyński ; russian: Фе́ликс Эдму́ндович Дзержи́нский; – 20 July 1926), nicknamed "Iron Felix", was a Bolshevik revolutionary and official, born into Poland, Polish n ...
to run the SDKPiL's underground organisation, until Jogiches arrived, in October. He was a Polish delegate to the
Fourth and
Fifth RSDLP congresses in Stockholm, April 1906, and London, May 1907, and at the latter was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. Arrested several times, he escaped every time. He also facilitated Jogiches's escape from prison in April 1907, by bribing a police officer.
But in 1910, exasperated by Jogiches's refusal to allow discussion within the SDKPiL over issues such as whether to participate in the recently legalised trade unions (which Jogiches opposed), Hanecki toured Germany and Austria, organising what became known as the 'Zhaddovites'. This group held its own conference in Warsaw in December, and subsequently created a separate organisation, of which Hanecki was the undisputed leader. Other members included
Karl Radek
Karl Berngardovich Radek (russian: Карл Бернгардович Радек; 31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I and a C ...
,
Josef Unshlicht Josef may refer to
*Josef (given name)
*Josef (surname)
* ''Josef'' (film), a 2011 Croatian war film
*Musik Josef
Musik Josef is a Japanese manufacturer of musical instruments. It was founded by Yukio Nakamura, and is the only company in Japan spe ...
,
Yakov Dolecki - all later high ranking officials in the Soviet Union - and two future leaders of the
Communist Party of Poland
The interwar Communist Party of Poland ( pl, Komunistyczna Partia Polski, KPP) was a communist party active in Poland during the Second Polish Republic. It resulted from a December 1918 merger of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland a ...
,
Henryk Domski
Henryk Stein-Domski (real name: Stein; pseud Kamiensky) (5 September 1883 – 26 October 1937) was a Polish communist politician and activist, who led the Communist Party of Poland in 1925, before being ousted and repressed as a suspected Trotskyis ...
and
Julian Lenski
Julian may refer to:
People
* Julian (emperor) (331–363), Roman emperor from 361 to 363
* Julian (Rome), referring to the Roman gens Julia, with imperial dynasty offshoots
* Saint Julian (disambiguation), several Christian saints
* Julian (gi ...
.
Lenin's agent
Hanecki first met Lenin in Brussels in 1903, and was in contact with him in Finland in 1907, and assisted him in moving his household to Cracow in 1912. He also persuaded Lenin to intervene in Polish affairs, siding with the Rozlamovists against Leo Jogiches and Rosa Luxemburg, and became one of Lenin's most trusted agents. He acted as chairman of the three man committee - whose other members were Lenin and
Grigori Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev, . Transliterated ''Grigorii Evseevich Zinov'ev'' according to the Library of Congress system. (born Hirsch Apfelbaum, – 25 August 1936), known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky (russian: Ов ...
- who looked into whether
Roman Malinovsky
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
, the former head of the Bolshevik parliamentary delegation, was a police spy, and wrongly exonerated him. Lenin and Hanecki were living in
Poronin
Poronin , is a village in southern Poland situated in Tatra County of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999 (it was previously in Nowy Sącz Voivodeship from 1975-1998). It lies approximately north-east of Zakopane and south of the regional c ...
, a village close to the border, when war broke out between Austria and Russia in August 1914, and Lenin was threatened with arrest, as a Russian. Hanecki rescued him by arranging transport to the nearest town,
Nowy Targ
Nowy Targ (Officially: ''Royal Free city of Nowy Targ'', Yiddish: ''Naymark'', Goral Dialect: ''Miasto'') is a town in southern Poland, in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. It is located in the Orava-Nowy Targ Basin at the foot of the Gorce Mount ...
where - according to Lenin's widow - he warned the local chief of police that Lenin was an important figure in the world socialist movement and "a man for whose life he, the commander, would have to answer."
In 1915, Hanecki moved via Switzerland to Copenhagen, where he formed a commercial company, Handels-og Eksportkompagniet A/S (Trade and Export Co. Ltd.), with himself as chairman of the board of directors, and his wife as the book keeper. Half the start-up capital was provided by the wealthy ex-revolutionary
Alexander Parvus
Alexander Lvovich Parvus, born Israel Lazarevich Gelfand (8 September 1867 – 12 December 1924) and sometimes called Helphand in the literature on the Russian Revolution, was a Marxist theoretician, publicist, and controversial activist in the ...
, the other half by a mysterious individual named Georg Sklarz, who was probably a German agent. The company traded in thermometers, syringes and drugs and German-made office equipment. In January 1917, Hanecki was hauled before a judge for exporting medical goods to Sweden without a licence, fined heavily, expelled from Denmark, and put on a ferry to Stockholm, where he seems to have had no difficulty re-establishing his wholesale business, trading in contraceptives. After the
February revolution
The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and somet ...
, he was active in helping exiled Russian revolutionaries to return to Russia - most notably Lenin, whom he supplied with money for the journey, and greeted when his party arrived in Sweden after crossing Germany in a '
sealed train
A sealed train is one that travels internationally under customs and/or immigration seal, without its contents legally recognized as entering or leaving the nations traversed between the beginning and end of the journey or subject to any otherwis ...
' in April 1917. Lenin appointed him a member of the three man Stockholm bureau of the Bolshevik party, with Karl Radek and
Vatslav Vorovsky
Vatslav Vatslavovich Vorovsky ( Russian: Ва́цлав Ва́цлавович Воро́вский; Polish: Wacław Worowski) (27 October Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._15_October.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title ...
.
In July 1917, after an abortive Bolshevik-led attempt to overthrow Russia's provisional government, Lenin was accused by government supporters of being a paid German agent. It was alleged that the German general staff was funneling money to the Bolsheviks, with Hanecki as the go-between. The head of the Provisional Government,
Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky, ; Reforms of Russian orthography, original spelling: ( – 11 June 1970) was a Russian lawyer and revolutionary who led the Russian Provisional Government and the short-lived Russian Republic for three months ...
claimed in his memoirs that the government had proof that Hanecki intended to enter Russia in July, carrying incriminating material, and would have had him arrested, but he was alerted in time. At the time, Lenin denied that Hanecki was a Bolshevik, or that the Bolsheviks had ever received money from him. This was untrue. He subsidised both Lenin, and his old Polish comrades who were now working with the Bolsheviks, but the evidence is that the money he gave them came from his profitable smuggling operations, rather than directly from the German government - though there is a question over whether he could have established himself in business without the indirect help of the German government.
In the summer of 1917, the
Central Committee
Central committee is the common designation of a standing administrative body of Communist party, communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, of both ruling and nonruling parties of former and existing socialist states. In such party org ...
of the RSDLP (b) examined the personal case of Ganetsky and
Mieczysław Kozłowski, and he was accused of speculation and smuggling, Ganetsky, in his testimony about this company, reported: It was business, I turned to him and offered my services. Parvus first offered me money for my personal equipment in commerce. But, having no experience, I did not want to personally do business with other people's money. A little later, a joint-stock company was organized, and I was the manager".
Personality and later career
Hanecki moved to Russia, with Karl Radek, eleven days after the Bolshevik revolution, and was appointed deputy chairman of the state bank, but despite his 21 years in the revolutionary movement and obvious ability as an administrator, he had no significant political influence within the Soviet communist party. He was "never a popular person; he was a hard and ruthless man, of unattractive appearance and personality...but of his commercial ability, hard work and conspiratorial talent, there can be no doubt." When his membership of the
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
was under review in 1921, he supplied personal references from Lenin and
Dzerzhinsky. However, after those two men were dead, he served
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 ...
with the same uncritical loyalty that he had shown Lenin.
In 1918, he was appointed chairman of the state bank.
[russian]
Яков Станиславович Ганецкий
(настоящая фамилия — Фюрстенберг) Исполняющий обязанности Главного комиссара Народного банка РСФСР в ноябре 1918 г. — январе 1920 г. In 1920-23, he worked for the
People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs
The Ministry of External Relations (MER) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (russian: Министерство иностранных дел СССР) was founded on 6 July 1923. It had three names during its existence: People's Co ...
. He handled financial dealings with Poland after the
Treaty of Riga
The Peace of Riga, also known as the Treaty of Riga ( pl, Traktat Ryski), was signed in Riga on 18 March 1921, among Poland, Soviet Russia (acting also on behalf of Soviet Belarus) and Soviet Ukraine. The treaty ended the Polish–Soviet War.
...
established relations between the two countries. Later, he successfully negotiated with Poland for the return of Lenin's archive, left behind in Cracow. In October 1921 he negotiated and signed the
Treaty of Kars
The Treaty of Kars ( tr, Kars Antlaşması, rus, Карсский договор, Karskii dogovor, ka, ყარსის ხელშეკრულება, hy, Կարսի պայմանագիր, az, Qars müqaviləsi) was a treaty that est ...
with Turkey, on behalf of the Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Simultaneously, he was
Soviet envoy to Latvia in 1920-22. In 1923-29, he worked for the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade. In 1929-32, he was on the Praesidium of the supreme economic council. In 1932-35, he was head of the State Union for Music, Stage and Circus. From 1935, he was
director of the Museum of the Revolution of the USSR.
Arrest and execution
Hanecki was arrested on 18 July 1937, along with his wife, Giza, and son, Stanislav. Police who raided his apartment (in the "
House on the Embankment
The House on the Embankment (russian: link=no, Дом на набережной) is a block-wide apartment building on the banks of the Moskva River on Balchug in downtown Moscow, Russia. It faces Bersenevskaya Embankment on one side and Serafim ...
", 2, Serafimovicha Street, apartment 10)
[russian]
Расстрелянныев Москве, Серафимовича ул.
/ref> found a wealth of banned literature, written by communists who had since fallen foul of the Stalin regime, but no money, despite the vast sums that Hanecki had handled on behalf of the regime. He was accused of maintaining contact with Polish and German intelligence during trade visits to those countries. He stubbornly and courageously refused to confess, despite appalling torture, and despite being confronted in prison with others, including Adolf Warski, who had given in under interrogation and incriminated him. His case was referred to Stalin, who wrote the single word 'liquidate' by his name. Hanecki was sentenced to death after a 15 minute trial on 26 November 1937, and executed the same day. His wife and son were also shot to death.
He was rehabilitated in 1954.
References
External links
Semion Lyandres
''The Bolsheviks' "German Gold" Revisited: An Inquiry into the 1917 Accusations''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ganetsky, Yakov
1879 births
1937 deaths
Politicians from Warsaw
People from Warsaw Governorate
19th-century Polish Jews
Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania politicians
Old Bolsheviks
Jews executed by the Soviet Union
Jewish socialists
People of the Russian Revolution
Polish revolutionaries
Bolshevik finance
Soviet rehabilitations
Great Purge victims from Poland
Executed people from Masovian Voivodeship
Ambassadors of the Soviet Union to Latvia