Grigori Yakovlevich Sokolnikov (born Hirsch Yankelevich Brilliant; 15 August 1888 – 21 May 1939) was a Russian revolutionary, economist, and Soviet politician.
Born to a Jewish family in Romny (now in Ukraine), Sokolnikov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905, and was active as a Bolshevik during the 1905 Revolution. He was exiled to Siberia from 1907 to 1909, when he escaped to Western Europe, and obtained a doctorate in economics from the Sorbonne. In 1917, Sokolnikov returned to Russia and was elected to the party's Central Committee, and following the October Revolution, oversaw the nationalisation of banks, was a member of the delegation at the negotiations for the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and served as political commissar during the Russian Civil War. He served as the People's Commissar for Finance from 1922 to 1926 before being demoted to lower positions due to his opposition to Stalin's rise to power. In 1936, Sokolnikov was arrested during the Great Purge, and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment at the Moscow trials. He was later killed in prison in 1939.
Early career Grigori Sokolnikov was born Girsh Yankelevich Brilliant in Romny on 15 August 1888, the son of a Jewish doctor employed by the railways. He moved to Moscow as a teenager and became involved in revolutionary circles alongside his friend and classmate, Nikolai Bukharin. He joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905. In 1906–07, he was based in the Sokolniki district of Moscow as a Bolshevik propagandist until autumn 1907, when mass arrests crushed the district organization, and he was detained for 18 months in solitary confinement in Butyrka prison, and sentenced to lifelong exile in Siberia. Deported in February 1909, it took four months for him to reach his assigned destination, a village called Rybnoye, on the bank of the Angara River, and six weeks to escape, via Moscow to Paris. This volume has an English translation of Sokolnikov's autobiographical essay first published in Moscow in 1927. In 1914, Sokolnikov obtained a doctorate in economics from the Sorbonne. He joined the 'conciliatior' Bolsheviks, who wanted to avert an outright split with the Mensheviks. During the war, he moved to Switzerland, and contributed to the newspaper Nashe Slovo, edited by Trotsky.
In April 1917, Sokolnikov was a passenger in the famous sealed train that took Vladimir Lenin and other Bolsheviks across Germany to Russia.
Role in 1917 In April 1917, Sokolnikov was elected to the Moscow party committee. He backed Lenin's call for a second revolution. When Lenin was forced to go into hiding, in July, Sokolnikov moved to Petrograd, where he and Stalin were given joint control over Bolsheviks newspapers.Trotsky, L. 'A New Moscow Amalgam' in "Writings of Leon Trotsky (1936–37)", pg.120, Pathfinder, New York
Elected to the Central Committee in August 1917, he was selected in October as a member of the 'Political Bureau', a forerunner of the Politburo, whose members were Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov, but the 'bureau' never met. Trotsky wrote later that it was 'completely impractical', with Lenin and Zinoviev in hiding, and Zinoviev and Kamenev opposed to the planned Bolshevik insurrection.
Brest-Litovsk Treaty After the October Revolution, he was a member of the original delegation led by Joffe sent to Brest-Litovsk to sign a truce with Germany. When the truce broke down, and the Germans were advancing through Latvia towards Petrograd, he backed Lenin's line that the Soviet government would have to capitulate, although he saw this as a delaying tactic while they created a Red Army capable of conducting a 'revolutionary war'.
When the decision was made, on 24 February 1918, no one wanted to sign the surrender, and Sokolnikov was instructed to lead the delegation, after he had tried in vain to nominate Zinoviev instead. He signed the final treaty, angrily and under protest, on 3 March, forecasting that Germany’s expansionism would be short-lived. The German and Austrian diplomats complained that his outburst spoiled the final day of negotiations. Sokolnikov later wrote that "the division of labour in capitalist society was brilliantly expressed in this contrast of unceremonial plunder at the front and mannerly gentlemanliness at the green table".
On 10 May, Sokolnikov told a meeting of the Central Committee that the Germans could not be trusted to honour the treaty, and that it had been a mistake to sign it. It required a fierce rebuttal from Lenin to avert the threat of resuming the war. Despite his intervention, in June 1918, Sokolnikov led a delegation to Berlin to negotiate a trade treaty with Germany, but the talks were aborted after the assassination of the German ambassador in Moscow, Wilhelm von Mirbach in July.
Role in the Civil War After his return from Brest, late in 1917, Sokolnikov supervised the seizure of Russian banks, and the creation of new centralised banking system. In March 1918, he was appointed an editor of Pravda, but he spent almost the entire Russian Civil War on the front line, firstly as Political commissar with the Second Army, which was responsible for putting down anti-Bolshevik rebellions on the western side of the Ural mountains, around Vyatka and Izhevsk. Two months later, after the rebellion had been crushed, he was transferred to the Southern Front, as commissar for the Ninth Army and later the Thirteenth Army, for the campaign against the Don Cossacks who had been rebelled against Bolshevik rule, and the White Army of General Denikin. Later, alongside Rosalia Zemlyachka, he became commissar of the Eighth army, using this position to order mass shootings during the Russian Civil War.Boris Bajanov, Bajanov révèle Staline, Gallimard, 1979 He was also, for a time, military commander of the Eighth Army, despite a protest from Stalin's ally Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who wrote to Lenin demanding:"Where did the idea come from that Sokolnikov could command an army? ... Is it to protect Sokolnikov's pride that he has been allowed to play with a whole army?" In August 1920, Sokolnikov was posted to Central Asia as chairman of the government of Turkestan and commander of the Turkestan Front. He led the suppression of the Basmachi rebellion. He also oversaw the introduction of a new currency, the introduction of tax in place of appropriation of surplus produce, the return of free trade, the return of land to Kirghiz that had been seized by Russian settlers, and the revival of cotton production.
Commissar for Finance Sokolnikov was appointed USSR Deputy People's Commissar of Finance on 10 January 1922. Since the People's Commissar, Nikolai Krestinsky had been appointed Ambassador to Germany, he was in fact in charge of Narkomfin from that time. In March 1922, he was re-elected to the Central Committee (from which he had been dropped in 1920) and in the autumn he was formally appointed as People's Commissar. This role made him central to the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP). More than anyone else, he is credited with introducing a stable currency to end the economic chaos of the civil war years. He proposed the introduction of a new currency in the month when he first took office. The 'gold bank notes' or chervontsi were issued by the state bank in November 1922.
During 1922, Sokolnikov argued persistently in favour of relaxing the state monopoly on foreign trade, to allow some of the private enterprises that came into existence under NEP to import equipment sell their produce abroad without going through government agencies. He was supported by Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin – i.e. by a majority of the Politburo – but met vehement opposition from Lenin, who warned: "Sokolnikov is making a great mistake, which is sure to ruin us, unless the C.C. corrects his line in time, and actually secures implementation of the corrected line. His mistake is abstract enthusiasm for a scheme (something of which Sokolnikov has always been guilty, as a talented journalist and a politician who is easily carried away)." In October 1922, Sokolnikov persuaded the Central Committee to agree to partially lift the monopoly, provoking an angry reaction from Lenin, who missed the meeting through illness. He accused Sokolnikov of being someone who "likes paradoxes". The Central Committee backed down in December, after Trotsky – who also missed the October meeting – had backed Lenin.
Speaking to the 11th Congress of the CPSU in March 1922, Sokolnikov flatly contradicted those who suggested that the state should print more paper money to finance the revival of war-damaged industry, likening it to poisoning the system by injecting opium. More controversially, he warned that many factories were losing money and living off the state, and would have to pay their way by selling products in the new free market conditions of NEP.He became a candidate member of the Politburo of the Communist Party in May 1924. According to Boris Bajanov, as minister of finance Sokolnikov proved himself to be a capable administrator, accomplishing every task he was asked to do, such as creating the first stable Soviet currency. Bajanov also notes that despite Sokolnikov's past in the Red Army, he was not ruthless in his personality. Privately, Sokolnikov lost faith in the Soviet Union under Stalin and later described the Soviet economy as state capitalist.
Family In 1925, Sokolnikov married the writer Galina Serebryakova. They had a daughter, Geliana, born in 1934.
Opposition to Stalin On 5 September 1925, Sokolnikov signed the unpublished 'Platform of the Four', a joint protest by Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya against Stalin's leadership. His decision seems to have been more personal than political, because politically he was on the right of the party, whereas Zinoviev and Kamenev were about to join Trotsky in the United Opposition. He appears to have been motivated by mistrust of Stalin, and friendship with Kamenev.
Even while publicly aligned with the opposition, he continued to argue that agricultural output had to be increased before industry could be expanded, and that consumer goods should be imported to give the peasants an incentive to take their produce to market. He was also openly dismissive of the figures produced by Gosplan, believing that 'state capitalism' properly managed would be more efficient that a centrally planned economy.
According to historian, Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin pleaded with Sokolnikov, not to discuss Lenin’s testament at the 15th party Congress.
On January 16, 1926, Sokolnikov was removed as People’s Commissar for finance as part of a campaign to disempower the Zinoviev Opposition and transferred to Gosplan, where he was a vice chairman.R.W. Davies, et al. (eds.), Soviet Government Officials, 1922–41: A Handlist. Birmingham, England: CREES/University of Birmingham, 1989; p. 381. After reaffirming his willingness to support the party line, he was allowed to retain his membership of the Central Committee, however. In the same month, he was removed from the post of People's Commissar for finance, and appointed Deputy Chairman of Gosplan. In spring 1926, he was sent on a trade mission to the US, which aborted when he was denied a visa.
In March 1928, when the Central Committee discussed the food crisis – to which Stalin reacted later in the year by sending shock troops into the villages to collect grain by force – Sokolnikov made a speech in which, while admitting that he had been wrong in the past, he stuck to his earlier beliefs by arguing that the way to get peasants to sell their produce was to raise the price of grain. However, after the introduction of the First five-year plan, he defended the principle that it was possible and necessary for the state to intervene and plan economic output. He wrote: