Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky ( rus, Евге́ний Алексе́евич Преображе́нский, p=jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪt͡ɕ prʲɪəbrɐˈʐɛnskʲɪj; 1886–1937) was a Russian revolutionary,

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

economist and sociologist. A member of the governing Central Committee of the

Bolshevik 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 ...

faction and its successor, the All-Union Communist Party, Preobrazhensky is remembered as a leading voice for the rapid industrialisation of peasant Russia through a concentration on state-owned

heavy industry Heavy industry is an industry that involves one or more characteristics such as large and heavy products; large and heavy equipment and facilities (such as heavy equipment, large machine tools, huge buildings and large-scale infrastructure); o ...

. Closely associated with

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 ...

and the

Left Opposition The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927 headed ''de facto'' by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet fou ...

movement of the 1920s, Preobrazhensky fell afoul of

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 Secretar ...

. He recanted

Trotskyism Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...

in 1929, but eventually joined a secret alliance with Trotsky in 1932. He was arrested in 1933 and shot in 1937 during 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 Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...

Early years

Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky was born in

Bolkhov Bolkhov (russian: Бо́лхов) is a town and the administrative center of Bolkhovsky District in Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Nugr River (Oka's tributary), from Oryol, the administrative center of the oblast. Population: 12,800 (1 ...

Oryol Governorate Oryol Governorate (russian: Орловская губерния, ''Orlovskaya guberniya'') or the Government of Oryol, was an administrative division (a ''guberniya'') of the Russian Empire and the early Russian SFSR, which existed from 1796 to 19 ...

, Russia Empire on 15 February 1886 (

Old Style Old Style (O.S.) and New Style (N.S.) indicate dating systems before and after a calendar change, respectively. Usually, this is the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as enacted in various European countries between 158 ...

). His father was the son of an

Orthodox priest Presbyter is, in the Bible, a synonym for ''bishop'' (''episkopos''), referring to a leader in local church congregations. In modern Eastern Orthodox usage, it is distinct from ''bishop'' and synonymous with priest. Its literal meaning in Greek (' ...

who taught for seven years in a

zemstvo A ''zemstvo'' ( rus, земство, p=ˈzʲɛmstvə, plural ''zemstva'' – rus, земства) was an institution of local government set up during the great emancipation reform of 1861 carried out in Imperial Russia by Emperor Alexande ...

school before his ordination in 1883.Mikhail M. Gorinov, "Foreword," in Richard B. Day and Mikhail M. Gorinov (eds.), ''The Preobrazhensky Papers: Archival Documents and Materials: Volume I, 1886-1920.'' Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2015; pg. xxi. Following his appointment as a parish priest in Bolkhov in the summer of 1883, the elder Preobrazhensky opened an elementary school for the parish at his own expense. It was in that school that Yevgeni was first educated. In an autobiography written for the Great Russian Encyclopedia, he recalled being a very religious child and intellectually precocious child, who learnt to read at the age of four. After leaving his father's private school, Preobrazhensky spent two years attending the state-operated Bolkhov public school. He subsequently left the town to attend the classically oriented gymnasium in the provincial capital of Oryol, where Preobrazhensky remembered himself as the "second-best student in the class". It was during his years at the Orël gymnasium that Preobrazhensky first became interested in politics, turning from the subjects taught in the classical gymnasium to reading newspapers, intellectual journals, history textbooks, and socially oriented novels. At the age of 14, he decided that he was an atheist, and rejected "the religious quackery" that he witnessed at first hand. This brought him into conflict with his priestly father, who in 1902 was appointed dean of the network of church-run schools in Bolkhov parish.Gorinov, "Foreword," pg. xxix. The estrangement between father and son would last for decades. During his fifth of eight years at the gymnasium, Preobrazhensky began to accumulate illegal radical literature, including a proclamation by revolutionary students of the Ekaterinoslav Mining Institute, an account of a beating of protesting students at the hands of Cossacks, and

hectograph The hectograph, gelatin duplicator or jellygraph is a printing process that involves transfer of an original, prepared with special inks, to a pan of gelatin or a gelatin pad pulled tight on a metal frame. While the original use of the technolo ...

ed editions of radical poetry and song lyrics. That summer, upon his return to the family home at Bolkhov, Preobrazhensky closely reviewed this and other illegal material and determined to himself become actively involved in the revolutionary movement seeking the overthrow of the

Tsarist Tsarist autocracy (russian: царское самодержавие, transcr. ''tsarskoye samoderzhaviye''), also called Tsarism, was a form of autocracy (later absolute monarchy) specific to the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its successor states ...

regime in Russia.

Underground revolutionary

1876 Transfer-Tablet-Hektograph-Holcomb 1

Preobrazhensky decided to henceforth "devote a minimum of time to the gymnasium's subjects", merely enough to attain passing marks, to dedicate the bulk of his hours to the study of history and economics.Gorinov, "Foreword," pg. xxxiv. Among the budding revolutionaries who were his friends was one Alexander Aleksin, the son of a local printer, whom Preobrazhensky persuaded to steal lead type from his father's printing works, with a view to establishing an illegal print shop of his own that could produce better results than a hectograph could provide. Preobrazhensky attempted to set type for a pamphlet reproducing revolutionary song lyrics and a declaration "We Renounce the Old World," but his inferior printing equipment fell apart before he could master the process, and the type was eventually returned to Aleksin's printworks, without any printed publications being produced. During his seventh year at the gymnasium, Preobrazhensky felt himself compelled to choose which revolutionary organisation to support, being torn between the competing strategies of the peasant-oriented

Socialist-Revolutionary Party The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (the SRs, , or Esers, russian: эсеры, translit=esery, label=none; russian: Партия социалистов-революционеров, ), was a major politi ...

(PSR) and the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). Influenced by the '' Communist Manifesto'' and ''The Development of Scientific Socialism'' work by

Frederick Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' Evgraf Litkens Evgraf Alexandrovich Litkens (russian: Евграф Александрович Литкенc; 1888–1922)
was a

...

and Ivan Anisimov (who later joined the

Mensheviks 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 em ...

), Preobrazhensky declared his formal allegiance to the RSDLP late in 1903. After the start of the

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...

, the Orël committee of the RSDLP issued an anti-war proclamation, which the three students were ordered to distribute. They did this by sneaking into the changing room and stuffing over 150 copies into the coat pockets of older students. The police investigated, but could not identify the culprits, and all three were accepted as members of the RSDLP. During the summer prior to his eighth and final year at the Orël gymnasium, Preobrazhensky worked as a RSDLP propagandist to the workers of the Dyatkovo factory in Bryansky raion. Preobrazhensky was able to recruit the son of the Bryansky police to the RSDLP and successfully managed to conceal his small rotary

mimeograph A mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo, sometimes called a stencil duplicator) is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process is called mimeography, and a copy made by the proc ...

machine from searching authorities in a locked drawer of the inspector's own desk. Periodic meetings were held in the neighboring forest. In October 1905, Preobrazhensky was co-opted onto the Orël party committee. The RSDLP had by then split between 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 ...

, led by

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 1 ...

, and Mensheviks. The 19 year Preobrazhensky was one of only two convinced Bolsheviks on the committee. In November 1905, Preobrazhensky traveled to

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

where he was promoted to the position of chief propagandist for the urban Presnensky raion., and for the next 12 years, he was an itinerant professional revolutionary. He was arrested for the first time in

Perm Perm or PERM may refer to: Places *Perm, Russia, a city in Russia ** Permsky District, the district **Perm Krai, a federal subject of Russia since 2005 **Perm Oblast, a former federal subject of Russia 1938–2005 **Perm Governorate, an administra ...

in March 1906, but released after five months. He then moved to the

Ural Ural may refer to: *Ural (region), in Russia and Kazakhstan *Ural Mountains, in Russia and Kazakhstan *Ural (river), in Russia and Kazakhstan * Ual (tool), a mortar tool used by the Bodo people of India *Ural Federal District, in Russia *Ural econ ...

region, which he represented at the 4th RSDLP party conference in

Helsingfors Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The cit ...

(Helsinki) in November 1907. From autumn 1909, he was a member of the Bolshevik Party bureau in Irkutsk. He was arrested several times. On trial with other Bolsheviks in

Yekaterinburg Yekaterinburg ( ; rus, Екатеринбург, p=jɪkətʲɪrʲɪnˈburk), alternatively romanized as Ekaterinburg and formerly known as Sverdlovsk ( rus, Свердло́вск, , svʲɪrˈdlofsk, 1924–1991), is a city and the administra ...

, he was defended by

Alexander Kerensky Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky, ; 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 from late July to early Nove ...

, who in 1917 was head of the Provisional Government, until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks. After the February Revolution, in 1917, Preobrazhensky returned to the Urals, where he was elected to the regional party committee, which he represented at the 6th Congress of the Bolshevik Party, beginning near the end of July 1917, where he was elected as a candidate member (alternate) to the party's governing Central Committee.Donald A. Filtzer, "Introduction," to E.A. Preobrazhensky, ''The Crisis of Soviet Industrialization.'' London: Macmillan, 1980; pg. xiii.

Years in authority

From January 1918, Preobrazhensky was a candidate member of the Ural Provincial Committee of the Bolshevik Party. He was President of the

Presidium A presidium or praesidium is a council of executive officers in some political assemblies that collectively administers its business, either alongside an individual president or in place of one. Communist states In Communist states the presid ...

of the Ural Regional Committee of the Communist Party from May 1918, and was in that post when Nicholas II and his family were killed in the city of Yekaterinburg, though it was the Ural Regional Soviet under

Alexander Beloborodov Alexander Georgiyevich Beloborodov (russian: link=no, Алекса́ндр Гео́ргиевич Белоборо́дов; 26 October 189110 February 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, party figure and statesman ...

, Boris Didkovsky and Filipp Goloshchyokin who directly ordered the execution of the Imperial Family. Nonetheless, Preobrazhensky was aware of the decision in advance, and discussed the matter with Lenin in Moscow. In 1918, Preobrazhensky joined the Left Communists faction, which opposed the draconian peace with

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 ...

established by the

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (also known as the Treaty of Brest in Russia) was a separate peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), that ended Russia's ...

. It was at this time that Preobrazhensky became closely affiliated with Nikolai Bukharin, himself a popular Left Communist leader and member of the party Central Committee. In 1919, he co-wrote the book ''

The ABC of Communism ''The ABC of Communism'' (russian: Азбука коммунизма ''Azbuka Kommunizma'') is a book written by Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky in 1919, during the Russian Civil War.

'' with Nikolai Bukharin, who would strongly disagree with him on the industrialization issue. He also wrote ''The New Economics,'' a polemical essay on the dynamics of an economy in transition to socialism, ''Anarchism and Communism'' and ''The Decline of Capitalism.'' Preobrazhensky was elected a full member of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party at its 9th Congress, which opened at the end of March 1920. He was at the same time elected one of three secretaries of the Central Committee, and a member of the

Orgburo The Orgburo (russian: Оргбюро́), also known as the Organisational Bureau (russian: организационное бюро), of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union existed from 1919 to 1952, when it was a ...

. The other two party secretaries,

Nikolay Krestinsky Nikolay Nikolayevich Krestinsky (russian: Никола́й Никола́евич Крести́нский; 13 October 1883 – 15 March 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician who served as the Responsible Sec ...

and

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 ...

were both ill during 1920-21, which meant that Preobrazhensky carried most of the work and was, in effect, the 'real master' of the party apparatus. This was the most powerful post Preobrazhensky ever held. During 1920-21, the staff employed by the secretariat expanded to over 600, including a new section tasked with building up a card index that graded party members according to whether they were 'active and reliable', 'promising', or 'rank and file'. This system was later used by

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 Secretar ...

, who took over the secretariat two years later, to crush dissent within the party, which Preobrazhensky refused to do. Writing 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 ...

'' on 22 January 1921, he declared that "This possibility of greater freedom of criticism represents one of the conquests of the revolution." The Tenth party congress, in March 1921, was riven by a dispute over the role of the trade unions, in which Lenin and

were on opposite sides, with Preobrazhensky and the other secretaries backing Trotsky. The party was also shaken by the

Kronstadt rebellion The Kronstadt rebellion ( rus, Кронштадтское восстание, Kronshtadtskoye vosstaniye) was a 1921 insurrection of Soviet sailors and civilians against the Bolshevik government in the Russian SFSR port city of Kronstadt. Loc ...

, in the light of which Lenin resolved to ban organised factions within the party. All three party secretaries were sacked and lost their membership of the Central Committee. In 1921, Preobrazhensky was appointed President of the party's Financial Committee and Chief of the Directorate for Professional Training in the People's Commissariat of Education. Through the 1920s, he was a leading Soviet Economist, developing the plan for industrialisation of the country and an opponent of the

New Economic Policy The New Economic Policy (NEP) () was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, ...

. From 1924, he was one of the editors of ''Pravda'', and a member of the Board of

People's Commissariat of Finance The Ministry of Finance of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (russian: Министерство финансов СССР), formed on 15 March 1946, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. Until 1946 it w ...

Left Opposition

Preobrazhensky was the original leader of the

, for a few months before Trotsky openly broke with Stalin after Lenin's death. He was the main author and leader signatory of

The Declaration of 46 The Declaration of 46 was a secret letter sent by a group of 46 leading Soviet communists to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party on 15 October 1923. The declaration followed Leon Trotsky's letter sent to the Polit ...

, which called for greater freedom of dissent within the communist party, and attacked the leadership for having no strategy to deal with the current economic crisis. He was also the author of the theory of

Primitive socialist accumulation Primitive socialist accumulation, sometimes referred to as the socialist accumulation, was a concept put forth in the early Soviet Union during the period of the New Economic Policy. It was developed as a counterpart to the process of the primitive ...

, which argued that the state would have to lower the price of agricultural and increase the price of consumer goods, in order to extract the capital needed to expand soviet industry from the peasants, who made up 80 per cent of the population. He published a series of articles on the topic in ''Vestnik Kommunisticheskoi Akademii'' (Bulletin of the Communist Academy) in 1924Alec Nove, "Introduction" to ''The New Economics.'' London: Oxford University Press, 1965; pg. xi. These ideas were later expanded at book length in a 1926 volume, ''The New Economics.'' and were the basic economic tenets of the Left, o
Trotskyist
opposition, which brought Trotsky and Preobrazhensky together. Preobrazhensky visited Trotsky when he was in Berlin for medical treatment in 1926, an "interesting" fact that Stalin, noted in a letter to Molotov, after it had been reported back to him by the Ogpu. Preobrazhensky (and Trotsky) advocated for a rapid pace of industrialization in the context of the Soviet Union's

, arguing that the numerically-limited Communist Party faced a grave danger of being swamped by the richest and most powerful individuals in the villages (the so-called

kulak Kulak (; russian: кула́к, r=kulák, p=kʊˈlak, a=Ru-кулак.ogg; plural: кулаки́, ''kulakí'', 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), also kurkul () or golchomag (, plural: ), was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned ove ...

s) and the mass of peasants who might naturally follow these local leaders.Nove, "Introduction," pg. xiii. Differential pricing needed to be used, the pair claimed, with relatively high retail prices charged for textiles and manufactured goods of utility to the rural population and comparatively-low prices paid for agricultural products, thereby generating a surplus to finance industrial growth. This program was presented polemically in opposition to the policy of the Communist Party leadership, headed in this period by Stalin and Preobrazhensky's former collaborator on the book ''The ABC of Communism,'' Nikolai Bukharin, who felt the rich peasantry to be under control and who advocated reducing prices and improving quality of textiles and manufactured goods to spur peasant production of grain and win the sympathy of the rural and urban working people for the task of socialist development.

Personality

Trotsky's biographer,

Isaac Deutscher Isaac; grc, Ἰσαάκ, Isaák; ar, إسحٰق/إسحاق, Isḥāq; am, ይስሐቅ is one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites and an important figure in the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He was the ...

wrote:

Victor Serge Victor Serge (; 1890–1947), born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich (russian: Ви́ктор Льво́вич Киба́льчич), was a Russian revolutionary Marxist, novelist, poet and historian. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks fi ...

, who met Preobrazhensky in the 1920s, recalled that "he had driven himself so hard that during meetings it seemed that he might at any moment drop off to sleep; but his brain was still fresh, and crammed with statistics."

Expulsion

In 1927, the United Opposition, which now included former foes, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and their supporters, thrashed out a comprehensive ''Platform'' summing up their criticisms of the party line (which Trotsky published while he was in exile, under the title ''The Real Situation in Russia''). Trotsky demanded that the Central Committee publish and circulate it in time for it to be debated at the Fifteenth Party Congress, which was to be held in December. Stalin fiercely insisted that this request be refused, but copies of the ''Platform'' were produced and circulated in defiance of the party leadership. On the night of September 12/13, 1927, the OGPU raided a private house and uncovered a printing press, which had been used to print this and other opposition literature. They arrested the Old Bolshevik

Sergei Mrachkovsky Sergei Vitalevich Mrachkovsky (Russian: Сергеий Витальевич Мрачковский; 15 June 1888 – 24 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary, Red Army commander, and supporter of Leon Trotsky, who was executed at the start of th ...

, who was running the press, and announced that they had also caught a former officer who had fought against the Bolsheviks in the

White Army The White Army (russian: Белая армия, Belaya armiya) or White Guard (russian: Бѣлая гвардія/Белая гвардия, Belaya gvardiya, label=none), also referred to as the Whites or White Guardsmen (russian: Бѣлогв� ...

of Baron Wrangel . The presence of the 'Wrangel officer' was given huge publicity in the soviet press, to discredit the left, though when the Central Committee met in October, Stalin casually admitted that he was an OGPU informer. Mrachkovsky was expelled from the party, with 11 others, on 28 September. When their case came before the Central Control Commission, Preobrazhensky and Serebryakov submitted a statement seeking to refute the slander about a 'Wrangel officer', in which they admitted to a share of responsibility for the existence of the press. For that, they were expelled from the party early in October. It was the first time that expulsion had been used against eminent Old Bolsheviks. On 7 November 1927, Preobrazhensky took part in a demonstration to mark the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, but was attacked by a crowd as he tried to address a crowd from a balcony. In January 1928, he was sent to the

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...

and worked in the planning agencies. In April 1929, Preobrazhensky published an appeal entitled 'To All Comrades in Arms' in which, without repudiating the Opposition's past, he argued that since Stalin had altered the party's course and had begun rapid industrialisation of the soviet economy, the opposition now had a duty to reconcile itself to the party line. In May, he was allowed to travel to Moscow to negotiate the terms on which he and others might be allowed to return to the party. In June, he was joined Karl Radek and

Ivar Smilga Ivar Tenisovich Smilga (russian: И́вар Тени́сович Сми́лга, lv, Ivars Smilga; 1892–1938) was a Latvian Bolshevik leader, Soviet politician and economist. He was a member of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union. Early l ...

. On 13 July 1929, the three of them signed a letter in ''Pravda'' declaring that they had made an "ideological and organizational break with Trotskyism". About 400 deportees followed their lead in asking to have their party membership restored.

Opposition and execution

In January 1930, Preobrazhensky was restored to membership in the Communist Party and appointed to the

Nizhny Novgorod Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət ), colloquially shortened to Nizhny, from the 13th to the 17th century Novgorod of the Lower Land, formerly known as Gork ...

Planning Committee. In 1932, he was made a member of the Board of the People's Commissariat of the Light Industry, acting head of the People's Commissariat of State Farms. In an unknown date, he joined Ivan Smirnov's secret opposition group, which later by the end of 1932 entered a bloc with Leon Trotsky and some others in the USSR. In January 1933, he was arrested by the OGPU, charged with membership of ""the counter-revolutionary Trotskyist group of Smirnov I.N. , Ter-Vaganyan V.A., Preobrazhensky Ye.A. and others". He was sentenced to 3 years of exile and expelled from the party once again, but was readmitted to the party later in 1933. In February 1934, Preobrazhensky was one of the leading ex-oppositionists who were allowed to address the 17th Party Congress. He said that he was "ashamed" to remember his part in the 7 November 1927 demonstration, praised Stalin's "tremendous insight" and "tremendous courage" and praised workers who, in the old days, ignored those who opposed Lenin and always backed him because that way "you can't go wrong". He was arrested a second time on December 20, 1936, but unlike his old comrades, such Serebryakov, Mrachkovsky, Smirnov and Ter-Vaganyan, he was not a defendant at any of the

Moscow Show 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 t ...

, though he must have been under the same pressure as they all were to make a false confession .

Robert Conquest George Robert Acworth Conquest (15 July 1917 – 3 August 2015) was a British historian and poet. A long-time research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Conquest was most notable for his work on the Soviet Union. His books ...

the historian of the

wrote that: Preobrazhensky was arrested again on 2 January 1937 In July 13, 1937 he was sentenced to death by a secret tribunal and shot the same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated by the government of Mikhail Gorbachev on 22 December 1988.

Economic ideas

He argued in the new economics policy that the Soviet Union had to undertake the "

primitive accumulation In Marxian economics and preceding theories,Perelman, p. 25 (ch. 2) the problem of primitive accumulation (also called previous accumulation, original accumulation) of capital concerns the origin of capital, and therefore of how class distinct ...

" that early capitalist societies had had to. That is, the peasants' agricultural surplus had to be appropriated to invest in industry. Thus, the Soviet Union had to undertake by planning in " socialist primitive accumulation" what

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

had undergone by happenstance in the 17th century. This theory was criticized politically and associated with Trotsky and the Left Opposition, but it was arguably put into practice by Stalin in the 1930s as when Stalin said in a speech that the Soviet Union had to accomplish in a decade what England had taken centuries to do in terms of economic development in order to be prepared for an invasion from the West. This argument is disputed by Trotskyists and Soviet historians.

References

Works

English translations

''ABC of Communism: Volume 1.''
With Nikolai Bukharin. Patrick Lavin, trans. Detroit, MI: Marxian Educational Society, 1921. * ''Third Anniversary of the Russian Revolution.'' Glasgow, Scotland: Union Publishing Co., 1921. * ''The New Economics.'' Brian Pearce, trans. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. * ''From NEP to Socialism: A Glance into the Future of Russia and Europe.'' Brian Pearce, trans. London: New Park Publications, 1973. * ''The Crisis of Soviet Industrialization: Selected Essays.'' Donald A. Filtzer, ed. London: Macmillan, 1980. * ''The Decline of Capitalism.'' Richard B. Day, trans. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1985. * ''The Preobrazhensky Papers: Archival Documents and Materials: Volume I, 1886-1920.''

014 014 may refer to: * Argus As 014 * BIND-014 * 014 Construction Unit * Divi Divi Air Flight 014 * Pirna 014 * Tyrrell 014 The Tyrrell 014 was a Formula One car, designed for Tyrrell Racing by Maurice Philippe for use in the season. The cars wer ...

Richard B. Day and Mikhail M. Gorinov, trans and eds. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015.

In Russian

* ''О крестьянских коммунах. (Разговор коммуниста-большевика с крестьянином)'' (On Peasant Communes: Conversation of a Communist-Bolshevik with a Peasant). Moscow: Kommunist, 1918. * ''Нужна ли хлебная монополия?'' (Do We Need a Grain Monopoly?) Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Vserossiiskogo Tentral'nogo Ispolitel'nogo Komiteta Sovetov R., S., K. i K. Deputatov, 1918. * ''С кем идти крестьянской бедноте?'' (With Whom Will the Peasant Poor March?) Smolensk: 1918. * ''Крестьянская Россия и социализм. (К пересмотру нaшeй aграрнoй программы)'' (Peasant Russia and Socialism: Towards Revision of Our Agrarian Program). Petrograd: Priboi, 1918. * ''Азбука коммунизма: Популарное объяснение программы Российской коммунистической партий большевиков'' (The ABC of Communism: A Popular Explanation of the Program of the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks). With N.I. Bukharin. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelʹstvo, 1920. * ''Трёхлетие Октябрьской революции'' (Third Anniversary of the Russian Revolution). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelʹstvo, 1920. * "Перспективы новой экономической политики" (Perspectives on the New Economic Policy). ''Krasnyi nov','' (1921) No. 3, pp. 201–212. * ''Анархизм и коммунизм'' (Anarchism and Communism). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1921. * ''Бумажные деньги в эпоху пролетарской диктатуры'' (Paper Money in the Epoch of Proletarian Dictatorship). Tiflis, Georgia: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1921. * ''Финансы в эпоху диктатуры пролетариата'' (Finances in the Epoch of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat). Moscow: People's Commissariat of Finance, 1921. * ''Вопросы финансовой политики'' (Questions of Financial Policy). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1921.
"Русский рубль за время войны и революции"
(The Russian Ruble in Time of War and Revolution). ''Krasnyi nov','' (1922) No. 3, pp. 242–257.

(The Collapse of Capitalism in Europe). ''Krasnyi nov','' (1922) No. 5, pp. 151–165. * ''Причины падeния курса нашего рубля'' (Reasons for the Declining Course of Our Ruble). Moscow: People's Commissariat of Finance, 1922. * ''Ot NEPa k sot︠s︡ializmu (vzgli︠a︡d na budushchee Rossii i Evropy)'' (From NEP to Socialism: View of the Future of Russia and Europe). Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1922. * ''Итоги Генуезской кoнфerenции и хoзияственные перспективы Европы'' (Results of the Genoa Conference and the Economic Prospects of Europe). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelʹstvo, 1922. * ''О морали и классовых нормах'' (On Morals and Class Norms). Moscow-Petrograd: 1923. * ''О нем'' (About Him). Moscow: Gosizdat, 1924. * ''В.И. Ленин: Сoциолoгичeский набросок'' (V.I. Lenin: A Sociological Sketch). Moscow: Krasnyi nov', 1924. * ''Русские финансы и европеиская биржа в 1904-1906 г.г.'' (Russian Finances and European Market in 1904-1906). Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1926. * ''Экономика и финансы современной Франции'' (Economics and Finances of Contemporary France). Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Kommunisticheskoi akademii, 1926. * ''Новая экономика: Опыт теоретического анализа советского хозяиства'' (The New Economics: Experience of the Theoretical Analysis of the Soviet Economy). Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Kommunisticheskoi akademii, 1926. * ''Закат капитализма: Воспроизводство и кризисы при империализме и мировой кризис 1930-1931 г.г.'' (The Sunset of Capitalism: Reproduction and Crises associated with Imperialism and the World Crisis of 1930-1931). Moscow: 1931.

External links

Marxists Internet Archive. {{DEFAULTSORT:Preobrazhensky, Yevgeni 1886 births 1937 deaths People from Oryol Oblast People from Bolkhovsky Uyezd Old Bolsheviks Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Head of Propaganda Department of CPSU CC Regicides of Nicholas II Russian Trotskyists Russian economists Russian Marxists Russian atheists Great Purge victims from Russia Members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union executed by the Soviet Union Soviet rehabilitations