Jānis Rudzutaks (; – 29 July 1938) was a Latvian

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

revolutionary and a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

politician. He was executed during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

Early life

Rudzutaks was born in the

Kuldīga Kuldīga () () is a town in the Courland region of Latvia, in the western part of the country. It is the center of Kuldīga Municipality with a population of approximately 13,500. Kuldīga was first mentioned in 1242. It joined the Hanseatic L ...

district of the Courland Governorate (present-day Kursīši parish, Saldus municipality,

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

), the son of a farmhand. He started work as a swineherd after two years at parish school. In 1903 at the age of 16, he ran away to

Riga Riga ( ) is the capital, Primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga Planni ...

, where he worked in a factory. Two years later he joined the Latvian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1907, Rudzutaks was arrested because of his political views and was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor by military court. He served a part of his sentence in Riga and was then transferred to Butyrka prison in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

. Rudzutaks was released after the February Revolution of 1917.

Political career

After his release, Rudzutaks served in various positions in the All-Russian Communist Party (

Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

) (RCP(b)) and the trade unions. As head of the State Water Transport Administration in 1918–19, he organised the emergency delivery of food supplies along the Volga to Moscow to enable the city to function during the civil war's first month. In November 1919 he was posted to Tashkent as a member of the Turkestan Commission in charge of imposing communist rule in Central Asia. In March 1920 he was elected to the Central Committee of the RCP(b). In November 1920 he was appointed Secretary of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions. In that role he supported

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

's position both against the Workers' Opposition, who wanted to put the unions in control of industry, and against the left, led by Leon Trotsky, who proposed incorporating the unions in the state apparatus. At the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b), which was dominated by arguments over the future of the unions, he was re-elected to the Central Committee with 467 votes – nine more than Josif Stalin. Rudzutaks was ousted from his position as Secretary during the All Russian Congress of Trade Unions in May 1921, when he and the chairman, Mikhail Tomsky were blamed by Lenin and the Central Committee for failing to block a resolution put forward by the veteran Marxist, David Riazanov, that would have allowed union leaders to be elected by their own members rather than being selected by the party. In April he was sent back to Tashkent, with Tomsky, to supervise the establishment of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Alexander Barmine, the Soviet official who greeted them on arrival, remembered Rudzutaks as "a tall fellow with spectacles and curly hair, his strong features set in a round face." In April 1922 Rudzutaks was a member of the Soviet delegation at the Genoa Conference, where his task appears to have been to alert Moscow whenever the unpredictable foreign minister, Georgy Chicherin, departed from his negotiating brief. From 1922 to 1923 he was the chairman of

Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...

n bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). In April 1923 Rudzutaks was recalled to Moscow to work as one of three secretaries of the Central Committee, working alongside Stalin, who was General Secretary. Early in 1924, Lenin wrote his famous Testament, calling for Stalin to be sacked. It was frequently rumoured that Lenin's intention was to install Rudzutaks as the new General Secretary. This story was mentioned in the memoirs of the Old Bolshevik Anastas Mikoyan, and in the novel ''Children of the Arbat'' by Anatoly Rybakov. It may be why Stalin removed him from the secretariat in May 1924 after Lenin's death. He continued to hold high office, and backed Stalin against Trotsky and other opponents, including his former colleague, Tomsky. From 1924 until 1934 he was the

People's Commissar Commissar (or sometimes ''Kommissar'') is an English language, English transliteration of the Russian language, Russian (''komissar''), which means 'commissary'. In English, the transliteration ''commissar'' often refers specifically to the pol ...

(i.e., minister) for transportation. In 1926 Rudzutaks was appointed Deputy Chairman of the

Council of People's Commissars The Council of People's Commissars (CPC) (), commonly known as the ''Sovnarkom'' (), were the highest executive (government), executive authorities of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the Soviet Union (USSR), and the Sovi ...

(the equivalent of Deputy Premier) and held this position until 1937. In January 1926 he was made a candidate member of the Politburo. In July he was raised to full membership in place of Grigory Zinoviev, who was expelled as a member of the left opposition. In February 1932 Rudzutaks gave up his place on the Politburo on being appointed chairman of the Central Control Commission, and of '' Rabkrin'', making him the principal judge in cases involving alleged breaches of Communist Party discipline. He was, outwardly, totally loyal to Stalin, maintaining that even to question whether Stalin should be subject to re-election was a betrayal of the Party. However, in February 1934, he was removed and replaced by the more hard-line

Lazar Kaganovich Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (; – 25 July 1991) was a Soviet politician and one of Joseph Stalin's closest associates. Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, Kaganovich worked as a shoemaker and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ...

. He was restored to the Politburo, but only as a candidate member, implying that he had been demoted.

Arrest and execution

Rudzutaks was suddenly expelled from the Politburo and Central Committee on 24 May 1937 and arrested the next day, shortly after the arrest of the Red Army Marshal

Mikhail Tukhachevsky Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky ( rus, Михаил Николаевич Тухачевский, Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevskiy, p=tʊxɐˈtɕefskʲɪj; – 12 June 1937), nicknamed the Red Napoleon, was a Soviet general who was prominen ...

. There are two conflicting stories about the circumstances of Rudzutaks's arrest. One, published in the Soviet press in 1963, is that he was in a lively conversation in his dacha with Aleksandr Gerasimov and two other painters when he was seized. The other is that he was holding a supper party after a visit to the theatre, when the NKVD arrived and arrested everyone present. Yevgenia Ginzburg, wife of a senior Bolshevik who survived the

gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

, wrote about being forced to share a cell in Butyrki prison with 37 other women, four of whom were dressed in "absurd low-cut evening dresses, crumpled and bedraggled with high heeled shoes." A fellow prisoner explained that they were Rudzutaks's former dinner guests, who had been held for three months, and "the poor things haven't been allowed any parcels, so they're still in their evening dress." This was the first arrest of a sitting member or candidate member of the Politburo — with no record of ever having opposed the party line — and a signal that no one, however senior, apart from Stalin himself, was safe. Stalin's crony Vyacheslav Molotov was asked, some 40 years later, to explain, and said that Rudzutaks was arrested because "he was too easygoing about the opposition and considered it all nonsense, trifles. That was unforgivable" and because "he indulged too much in partying with philistine friends". Rudzutaks showed great courage under torture. Molotov was one of a delegation from the Politburo who confronted him in prison, and recalled: "Rudzutak said he had been badly beaten and tortured. Nevertheless he held firm. Indeed, he seemed to have been cruelly tortured". He broke down under torture and confessed to being a spy, but retracted and insisted that he was innocent. He was included in a list of 118 former high-ranking Bolsheviks, which was passed to Stalin in July 1938, just as Lavrentiy Beria was about to take over control of the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

from the murderous

Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Николай Иванович Ежов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet Chekism, secret police official under Joseph Stalin who ...

. Stalin instructed that they all be shot. At his trial, which lasted 20 minutes, Rudzutaks submitted a written statement protesting that "there is in the NKVD an as yet not liquidated center which is craftily manufacturing cases, which forces innocent persons to confess. There is no opportunity to prove one’s non-participation in crimes to which the confessions of various persons testify. The investigative methods are such that they force people to lie and to slander entirely innocent persons". He was sentenced to death and executed on 28 July 1938. After Stalin's death, Rudzutaks was one of the first victims of the terror to have his case posthumously reviewed. He was cleared of all charges in 1955. His case featured prominently in

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

's famous Secret Speech to the 1956 Communist Party congress.

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