Pelshe Arvid Yanovich - "unsinkable" party leader of the Soviet era

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:55

Pelshe Arvid Yanovich - Soviet and Latvian communist, member of the highest party bodies. In his youth, he was a participant in both revolutions of 1917, and then an employee of the Cheka. Pelshe was a well-known party and statesman of the USSR. Today we will talk a little about his biography. Not much is known about his life, so it is of interest.

Youth

Pelshe Arvid Yanovich was born in a peasant family. She lived on a small farm called Mazie. It was the Courland province of the then Russian Empire, and now Latvia, in 1899. His father's name was Johan, his mother was Lisa. The boy was baptized in the village church in March of that year. The young man left early for Riga. There he graduated from polytechnic courses, and then went to work. In 1915, he joined the Social Democratic circle, and soon joined the Bolshevik Party. In 1916 he met Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) in Switzerland. During the First World War, he was a worker in various citiesRussian Empire - in Petrograd, Arkhangelsk, Vitebsk, Kharkov. We can say that then he received his first party card. The young man with a good tongue was able to convince others. Therefore, at the same time, he also carried out party tasks in the field of agitation and propaganda. In February 1917, he took part in the events, became a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP. Pelshe actively prepared the October Revolution and took part in the coup itself.

Soviet power

In 1918 Pelshe Arvid Yanovich became an employee of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission. In this regard, Lenin sent him to Latvia with the aim of organizing the Red Terror. He also worked for the local People's Commissar for Construction and took part in the fighting. But after the defeat of the Latvian communists, Pelshe fled back to Russia. Until 1929 he lectured and taught in the Red Army. In those same years, this party leader took up his own education. In 1931, Arvid Yanovich graduated from the Institute of Red Professors in Moscow with a master's degree in historical sciences. But his area of interest was rather specific. It was about the history of the party, which he taught at a special institute at the Central School of the NKVD. Since 1933, he was sent to agitate for the formation of state farms in Kazakhstan, and then he became deputy head of the political department of the People's Commissariat of Soviet Farms of the USSR.

Pelshe Arvid Yanovich: biography and activities in the Latvian SSR

In 1940, this party leader briefly returned to his homeland. After allIt was then that Latvia became part of the USSR. There he became secretary of the highest party bodies in the field of propaganda and agitation - that is, in a matter that he always did well. But in 1941, Pelshe again fled to Moscow, where he waited out difficult times with other Latvian communists. He returned to his native places only in 1959 as the leader of the party "purge", fighting against "nationalist elements". Then he took the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, replacing Janis Kalnberzin, who previously held this position. He quickly became famous for carrying out any assignment from the Kremlin. Among the Latvians, Pelshe was terribly unpopular, especially after he led the forced industrialization of the republic.

Member of the Central Committee

Arvid Yanovich Pelshe remained "afloat" under any government in the USSR. In 1961, under Khrushchev, he even became a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and since 1966 - the Politburo. In 1962, when the "Molotov-Kaganovich group" was condemned, he immediately joined the majority and called those criticized "bankrupt apostates" who should be "thrown away like garbage from the party house." In 1966, when Khrushchev's memoirs were published in the United States, Khrushchev summoned him to give explanations. Until 1967, he led the so-called "Pelshe Commission", which investigated the death of Kirov. Pelshe remained a member of the Politburo until his death in 1983. In those days, he was one of the few representatives of non-Slavic peoples in the highest party bodies of the Soviet Union. In 1979 he, along withother comrades endorsed the decision of the Politburo on the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. Pelshe is also called the head of the "Soviet Inquisition" - that is, the Party Control Committee. The committee checked the observance of discipline in the organization. The famous phrase “put a party ticket on the table”, which was used to frighten many disobedient, refers specifically to her activities. On the other hand, it was this committee that put forward proposals for the rehabilitation of previously repressed communists.

Last years of life

During his lifetime, Pelshe received many awards, and the Riga Polytechnic Institute was named after him. He was married three times. Interestingly, Pelshe's second wife was the sister of Mikhail Suslov's wife. From his first marriage he had two children. The daughter's name was Beruta, and she died early. There was also a son, Arvik, who died during the war. The son from his second marriage, Tai, is still alive, but he practically did not maintain relations with his father after the death of his mother. The third wife of Pelshe was the ex-wife of Alexander Poskrebyshev, personal secretary of Joseph Stalin. This party leader died in Moscow, and the urn with his ashes was buried in the Kremlin wall.

Memory

The attitude towards the party leader at home has always been negative. As soon as Gorbachev's perestroika began, the residents of Riga removed a memorial plaque with his name from the building of the Polytechnic Institute, carried it around the city, and then threw it into the Daugava River from the Stone Bridge. Today, only a street in Volgograd is named after Pelshe. But before there were other places with hisname. In Moscow and St. Petersburg (Leningrad), there were also streets named after this Latvian figure. But things have changed since 1990. In the capital of Russia, Pelshe Street was made part of Michurinsky Prospekt, and in St. Petersburg it was renamed Lilac Street - in fact, it was returned to its former name.