Aleksandr Voronsky

Alexander Konstantinovich Voronsky (Russian Александр Константинович Воронский; born September 8, 1884 in Khoroshavka, Russia, † August 13, 1937 in Moscow) was a Russian revolutionary and is the preeminent literary critic of the early Soviet Union. As a former member of the Left Opposition to Stalinism, he was convicted in 1937 and shot to death in a summary trial.

Life

Voronsky was born in 1884 in the province of Tambov, the son of a village priest. In 1904, he joined as a student at the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. A year later he took in St. Petersburg part in the failed revolution of 1905 and was arrested. A one-year imprisonment followed by two years banishment to Jarensk.

After the February Revolution of 1917 he was Chairman of the Council of soldiers Koidanow in Minsk province. Shortly thereafter, he acted as a senior member of the Soviet Republic in Odessa, after the occupation by the German army, he went to Ivanovo, where he took high party offices and the newspaper published Rabotchi krai ( region workers ). From 1918 to 1920 he wrote nearly 400 articles for this.

His actions gained the attention of Lenin and Voronsky was summoned to Moscow. Here he founded a new journal, the Red Virgin Soil ( Red Virgin Soil ) and served as its editor.

In 1923 he became a member of the group to Leon Trotsky. He fought and wrote, inter alia, against the cult of the proletariat. He was very active in the group of writers Pereval whose leading figure he was. After the Left Opposition was divided in 1927, Voronsky was removed from his post as editor. In February 1928, he was expelled from the party in January of the year it was his arrest. He had for some months into exile in Lipetsk, but was allowed to return in the same year again to Moscow.

In the coming years fought Voronsky against Stalin and his interpretations of Bolshevism. During this time he also wrote his memoirs. On 1 February 1937 he was arrested again. A manuscript of the second part of the memories were confiscated by the Secret Service. There followed several months in pre-trial detention, on August 13 Voronsky was finally brought to trial and probably shot the same day.

His daughter Galina in 1937 was arrested as a daughter of an enemy of the people and was exiled to Kolyma. She died in December 1991.

1957 Voronsky was rehabilitated.

Works

• The art of seeing the world. Selected Writings 1911 - 1936, labor press, Essen 2003, ISBN 3-88634-077-5 ( Foreword online)