Raskolnikov is a revolutionary figure. Fyodor Raskolnikov - legendary Bolshevik or adventurous figure

I'll tell you the truth about you,

Which is worse than any lie.

Stalin, you declared me “outlaw”. With this act, you equalized me in rights - or rather, in lack of rights - with all Soviet citizens who, under your rule, live outside the law. For my part, I respond in full reciprocity: I return your entrance ticket to the “kingdom of socialism” you built and break with your regime. Your “socialism,” during the triumph of which its builders found a place only behind prison bars, is as far from true socialism as the arbitrariness of your personal dictatorship has nothing in common with the dictatorship of the proletariat.” It will not help you if the respected revolutionary N.A., awarded the order. Morozov will confirm that it was for this kind of “socialism” that he spent 20 years of his life under the arches of the Shlisselburg fortress.

The spontaneous growth of discontent among workers, peasants, and intellectuals imperiously demanded a sharp political maneuver like Lenin’s transition to the NEP in 1921. Under the pressure of the Soviet people, you “granted” a democratic constitution. It was received by the whole country with genuine enthusiasm. The honest implementation of the democratic principles of the 1936 constitution, which embodied the hopes and aspirations of the entire people, would mark a new stage in the expansion of Soviet democracy. But in your understanding, any political maneuver is synonymous with deception and deception. You cultivate politics without ethics, power without honesty, socialism without love for people.

What have you done with the constitution, Stalin? Frightened by freedom of choice, as a “leap into the unknown” that threatened your personal power, you trampled the constitution like a piece of paper, turned the elections into a pathetic farce of voting for a single candidate, and filled the sessions of the Supreme Council with akathists and ovations in honor of yourself.” In the intervals between sessions, you silently destroy the “feinting” deputies, mocking immunity and reminding that the owner of the Soviet land is not the Supreme Council, but you. You did everything to discredit Soviet democracy, just as you discredited socialism. Instead of following the constitutionally outlined turnaround, you are suppressing the growing discontent with violence and terror. By gradually replacing the dictatorship of the proletariat with the regime of your personal dictatorship, you opened a new stage, which will go down in the history of our revolution under the name of the era of terror. Nobody in the Soviet Union feels safe. No one goes to bed knowing whether he will be able to avoid arrest at night. There is no mercy for anyone. The right and the guilty, the hero of October and the enemy of the revolution, the old Bolshevik and the non-party, the collective farm peasant and the plenipotentiary, the people's commissar and the worker, the intellectual and the Marshal of the Soviet Union - all are equally (p. 612) subject to the blows of the scourge, all are spinning in a devilish bloody carousel . Just as during a volcanic eruption, huge boulders collapse with a crash and roar into the mouth of the crater, so entire layers of Soviet society are torn off and fall into the abyss.

You began bloody reprisals against former Trotskyists, Zinovievites and Bukharinites, then moved on to the extermination of the old Bolsheviks, then destroyed party and non-party cadres who grew up in the civil war, bore on their shoulders the construction of the first five-year plans, and organized the beating of the Komsomol. You hide behind the slogan of the fight against Trotskyist-Bukharinist spies. But power has not been in your hands since yesterday. No one could get into a responsible post without your permission. Who installed the so-called “enemies of the people” in the most responsible positions of the state, party, army, diplomacy? - Joseph Stalin.

Who introduced the so-called “saboteurs” into all the pores of the Soviet and party apparatus? - Joseph Stalin. Read the old protocols of the Politburo: they are replete with the appointments and movements of only “Trotskyist-Bukharin spies”, “saboteurs” and “saboteurs”; under them there is a signature: I. Stalin. You are pretending to be a gullible simpleton who has been led by the nose for years by some masked carnival monsters.

Look for and convert scapegoats: you whisper to your confidants - and you load the caught victims, doomed to slaughter, with your own sins. You have shackled the country with a terrible fear of terror, even a daredevil cannot throw the truth in your face. Waves of self-criticism “regardless of faces” respectfully freeze at the foot of your throne. You are infallible, like dad. You are never wrong. But the Soviet people know very well that you, the “smith of universal happiness,” are responsible for everything. With the help of dirty forgeries You staged trials that exceeded nonsense accusations familiar to you from seminar textbooks - medieval witch trials. You yourself know that Pyatakov did not fly to Oslo, Maxim Gorky died of natural causes and Trotsky did not derail trains.

Knowing that all this is a lie, you encourage your slanderers: slander, slander, something will always remain from the slander. As you know, I have never been a Trotskyist. On the contrary, I ideologically fought all opposition in the press and at large meetings. And now I do not agree with Trotsky’s political position, with his program and tactics. While fundamentally disagreeing with Trotsky, I consider him an honest revolutionary. I do not and will never believe in his conspiracy with Hitler and Hess. You are a cook preparing spicy dishes that are inedible for a normal human stomach. Over Lenin’s coffin, you took a solemn oath to fulfill his will and preserve the unity of the party like the apple of your eye. Oathbreaker

You also violated this will of Lenin. You slandered and shot Lenin's long-time associates: Kamenev and Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov and others, whose innocence was well known to you. Before they died, you forced them to repent of crimes they never committed and to smear themselves with mud from head to toe. Where are the heroes of the October Revolution? Where is Bubnov? Where is Krylenko? Where is Antonov-Ovseenko? Where is Dubenko?

You arrested them, Stalin. Where is the old guard? She is no longer alive. You shot her, Stalin. You have corrupted and polluted the souls of your comrades. You forced those walking with you to walk in agony and disgust through the pools of blood of yesterday's comrades and friends. In the false history of the party, written under your leadership, you both (p. 613) stole the dead, killed and disgraced people by you and appropriated their exploits and merits. You destroyed Lenin’s party and on its bones you built a new “Lenin-Stalin party,” which serves as a successful cover for your autocracy. You created it not on the general basis of program and tactics, as every party is built, but on the unprincipled basis of personal love and devotion to you. Knowledge of the program of the new party was declared optional for its members, but love for Stalin, fueled daily by the press, was obligatory. Recognition of the party program is replaced by a declaration of love for Stalin. You are a renegade who has broken with his yesterday and betrayed the cause of Lenin. You solemnly proclaimed the slogan of promoting cadres. But how many of these young nominees are already rotting in your dungeons? How many of them did you shoot, Stalin? With the cruelty of a sadist, you beat up personnel who are useful and necessary for the country. They seem dangerous to you from the point of view of your personal dictatorship.

On the eve of the war, you are destroying the Red Army, the love and pride of the country, the stronghold of its power. You beheaded the Red Army and the Red Navy. You killed the most talented commanders, trained in the experience of the world and civil wars, who transformed the Red Army with the latest technology and made it invincible. At the moment of greatest military danger, you continue to exterminate army leaders, mid-level command staff and junior commanders. Where is Marshal Blucher? Where is Marshal Egorov? You arrested them, Stalin. To calm worried minds, you are deceiving the country that the Red Army, weakened by arrests and executions, has become even stronger. Knowing that the law of military science requires unity of command in the army from the commander-in-chief to the platoon commander, you resurrected the institution of political commissars, which arose at the dawn of the Red Army and the Red Navy, when we did not yet have our own commanders, and above the military specialists of the old army we needed a political control. By not trusting the Red commanders, you are introducing dual power into the army and destroying military discipline. Under pressure from the Soviet people, you are hypocritically resurrecting the cult of historical Russian heroes: Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy and Kutuzov, hoping that in a future war they will help you more than the executed marshals and generals. Taking advantage of the fact that you don’t trust anyone, real Gestapo agents and Japanese intelligence are successfully fishing in the muddy waters that you have stirred up, and they are feeding you an abundance of false documents that discredit the best, most talented and honest people. In the rotten atmosphere of suspicion, mutual distrust, general investigation and omnipotence of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, to which you have given the Red Army and the entire country to be torn apart, they believe or pretend to believe any “intercepted” document as indisputable evidence. By slipping false documents to Yezhov’s agents, compromising honest mission workers, the “internal line” of the EMRO in the person of Captain Foss achieved the defeat of our embassy in Bulgaria from the driver M.I. Kazakova to military attache N.T. Sukhorukova. You are destroying, one after another, the most important gains of October. Under the guise of combating labor turnover. You abolished freedom of labor, enslaved Soviet workers and attached them to factories and factories. You are destroying the economic organism of the country, disorganizing industry and transport, undermining the authority of the director, engineer and foreman, accompanying the endless leapfrog of dismissals and appointments with arrests and (p. 614) persecution of engineers, directors and workers as “hidden, not yet exposed saboteurs.” Having made normal work impossible, you, under the guise of fighting against “absenteeism” and “lateness” of workers, force them to work as scourges and scorpions of harsh and anti-proletarian decrees. Your inhumane repressions make the life of Soviet workers unbearable, who are fired from work and kicked out of their apartments for the slightest offense with a wolf passport.

The working class bore with selfless heroism the burden of hard work, malnutrition, cold, meager wages, crowded housing and lack of necessary goods. He believed that you were leading to socialism, but you betrayed his trust. He hoped that with the complete victory of socialism in our country, when the dream of the bright minds of humanity about the great brotherhood of people comes true, everyone would live joyfully and easily. You took away even this hope: You declared socialism completed. And the workers asked each other in bewilderment and whispers: if this is socialism, then what did they fight for, comrades? By distorting Lenin’s theory about the withering away of the state, you have distorted the entire theory of Marxism-Leninism; through the mouths of your illiterate home-grown “theorists” who took the vacant places of Bukharin, Kamenev and Lunacharsky, you promise to preserve the power of the GPU even under communism. You have deprived the collective farm peasants of every incentive to work. Under the guise of fighting the “squandering of collective farm land,” you are destroying personal plots in order to force the peasants to work on the collective farm fields. The organizer of the famine, with the rudeness and cruelty of indiscriminate methods that distinguish your tactics, you did everything to discredit Lenin’s idea of ​​collectivization in the eyes of the peasants. By hypocritically proclaiming the intelligentsia “the salt of the earth,” you have deprived the work of a writer, scientist, and painter of a minimum of internal freedom. You have put art in a vice from which it is suffocating and dying out. The fury of the censorship, intimidated by you, and the understandable timidity of the editors, who are responsible for everything with their own heads, led to the ossification and paralysis of Soviet literature. A writer cannot publish, a playwright cannot stage plays on the theater stage, a critic cannot express his personal opinion that is not marked with an official stamp. You are strangling Soviet art, demanding from it courtly sycophancy,

but it prefers to remain silent so as not to sing “hosanna” to you.

You are instilling pseudo-art that glorifies your notorious, tired “genius” with annoying monotony. Untalented graphomaniacs praise you as a demigod born of the Moon and the Sun, and you, like an oriental despot, enjoy the incense of coarse flattery. You mercilessly exterminate talented writers who are personally objectionable to you. Where is Boris Pilnyak? Where is Sergei Tretyakov? Where is A. Arosev? Where is Mikhail Koltsov? Where is Taras Rodionov? Where is Galina Serebryakova, guilty of being Sokolnikov’s wife? You arrested them, Stalin!

Following Hitler, you have resurrected the medieval book burning. I saw with my own eyes huge lists of books sent to Soviet libraries that were subject to immediate and unconditional destruction. When I was plenipotentiary in Bulgaria, in 1937, in the list of forbidden literature doomed to the fire I received, I found my book of historical memoirs “Kronstadt and St. Petersburg in 1917.” Against the names of many authors was written: “Destroy all books, brochures and portraits.” You deprived Soviet scientists, especially in the field of humanities (p. 615), of a minimum of freedom of scientific thought, without which creative work becomes impossible. Self-confident ignoramuses with intrigues, squabbles and bullying prevent scientists from working in universities, institutes, and laboratories. You proclaimed the world-famous outstanding Russian scientists Academician Ipatiev and Chichibabin “defectors” to the whole world, naively thinking of dishonoring them, but you only disgraced yourself by bringing to the attention of the whole country and world public opinion the shameful fact for your regime that the best scientists are fleeing from your heaven, leaving you your “good deeds”: an apartment, a car, a card for lunch in the Council of People’s Commissars canteen. You exterminated talented Russian scientists. Where is the best designer of Soviet airplanes, Tupolev? You didn't even spare him. You arrested Tupolev, Stalin!

There is no area, no corner where you can quietly do what you love. Theater director, wonderful director, outstanding artist Vs. Meyerhold was not involved in politics. But you also arrested Meyerhold, Stalin! Knowing that given our poverty of personnel, every experienced and cultured diplomat is especially valuable, you lured almost all Soviet plenipotentiaries to Moscow and destroyed one by one. You destroyed to the ground the entire apparatus of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. By destroying the country's gold fund and its young cadres everywhere, you destroyed talented and promising diplomats in their prime. In a terrible hour of military danger, when the edge of fascism is directed against the Soviet Union, when the struggle for Danzig and the war in China are only preparing a springboard for future intervention against the USSR, when the main object of German-Japanese aggression is our Motherland, when the only way to prevent war is open the entry of the Union of Soviets into the international bloc of democratic states, the speedy conclusion of a military and political alliance with England and France, you hesitate, wait and swing, like a pendulum, between two “axes”. In all calculations of your foreign and domestic policy, you proceed not from love for the Motherland, which is alien to you, but from a rotten fear of losing personal power. Your unprincipled dictatorship, like a rotten deck, lies across the road of our country. “Father of Nations”, you betrayed the defeated Spanish revolutionaries, abandoned them to their fate and left them to the care of other states. The magnanimous saving of human lives is not in your principles. Woe to the vanquished! You don't need them anymore. Jewish workers, intellectuals, artisans fleeing fascist barbarism. You indifferently left death to death, slamming the doors of our country in front of them, which in its vast expanses can hospitably shelter many thousands of emigrants. Like all Soviet patriots, I worked, turning a blind eye to many things. I've been silent for too long. It was difficult for me to break my last ties not with you, not with your doomed regime, but with the remnants of the old Leninist party, in which I spent almost 30 years, and you defeated it in three years. It pains me excruciatingly to lose my homeland. The further you go, the more the interests of your personal dictatorship come into irreconcilable conflict with the interests of the workers, peasants and intellectuals, with the interests of the entire country, over which you mock like a tyrant who has achieved sole power. Your social base is shrinking every day. In a frantic search for support, you hypocritically lavish compliments on the “non-party Bolsheviks”, create privileged groups one after another, shower them with favors, feed them (p. 616) with handouts, but are unable to guarantee the new “caliphs for an hour” not only their privileges, but even the right to live. Your crazy bacchanalia cannot last long.

The list of your crimes is endless. The scroll of your victims is endless, there is no way to list them. Sooner or later, the Soviet people will put you in the dock as a traitor to socialism and the revolution, the main saboteur, a true enemy of the people, the organizer of famine and judicial fraud.

Comprehend the cult of Stalin. M., Progress, 1989. P. 612 – 618.

Raskolnikov F. F.

(1892-1939; autobiography). - I was born on January 28 (old style) 1892 on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, on Bolshaya Okhta. Until 1900, I was raised by my mother, and in the fall of that year I was sent to study at the orphanage of the Prince of Oldenburg, which had the rights of a real school. In this nightmare school, where bursak morals had not yet been extinguished, where students were forced to kneel in front of the whole class for poor performance, and priest Lisitsyn publicly pulled his ears, I had to remain a boarder for eight years. In 1908 I graduated from college. By this time I was sixteen years old. In the seventh grade I became an atheist. In the same year, I became acquainted with the latest literature, that is, with the works of Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreev and others.

This literature helped strengthen my atheism. In 1909 I entered economics. St. Petersburg branch Polytechnic Institute.

Here it is necessary to briefly dwell on the formation of my political views. Back in 1905-1906, in the 5th and 6th grades of a real school, I took part in strikes twice, and once I was even elected to the student delegation and went to the director of the school demanding better living conditions, for which I was almost expelled from schools. The revolution of 1905 for the first time aroused in me political interest and sympathy for the revolutionary movement, but since I was only 13 years old at the time, I did not understand the disagreements of individual parties at all, and in my mood I called myself a socialist. Sympathy for the oppressed and exploited was supported by reading the works of Sheller-Mikhailov, of which the novel “The Forest is Cut Down, the Chips Fly” made a particularly strong impression on me. Thus, political experiences during the revolution of 1905 and a keen awareness of social injustice spontaneously attracted me to socialism. These sentiments found a warm, sympathetic response in me all the more because the material living conditions of our family were quite difficult.

In 1901, my father died, and my mother was left with two sons. The salary she received was 60 rubles. a month was entirely spent on current living expenses, and meanwhile it was necessary to educate me and my younger brother, Alexander (works in the party under the name Ilyin-Zhenevsky). The latter, due to lack of funds, had to be transferred from a real school, where he was a boarder, to the Vvedensky gymnasium.

While getting into debt, my mother managed to let me finish high school. In the same way, at first she had to pay for me at the Polytechnic. Institute. In subsequent semesters, due to the difficult financial situation, the advice of professors sometimes exempted me from tuition fees. In general, our family was in need at this time.

In my first year, I had the opportunity to become acquainted with the literary works of G. V. Plekhanov, which made me a Marxist. In the summer of 1910 I studied Capital. In December of the same year I joined the party. After the publication of the first issue of the legal Bolshevik newspaper Zvezda, I went to the editorial office and, declaring my complete solidarity with the direction of the newspaper, placed myself at the disposal of the editorial board. The receiver at my party literary font was K. S. Eremeev. From that moment on, I became a close collaborator of Zvezda and Pravda. Starting with the chronicle, I gradually moved on to articles, and my first article was published in the spring of 1911. In the era of Zvezda and Pravda, I also worked together with V. M. Molotov in the Bolshevik. faction Polytechnic. Institute and on her instructions maintained contact with the PC.

When the workers' newspaper Pravda appeared on April 22, 1912, I took the place of editorial secretary. But I only had to stay at this post for a month, since on the night of May 21-22 I was arrested and taken to the “pre-trial detention center.” I was charged under Article 102. belonging to the RSDLP. After 4½ months of solitary confinement, I was sentenced to administrative deportation for three years to Arkhangelsk province. But the link was replaced by travel abroad. On October 9th I left for Germany, but not far from the border, in Insterburg, where I decided to stop for a day's rest, German gendarmes arrested me on charges of spying for Russia. The main evidence was a schematic plan of the emigrant quarter in Paris, drawn before my departure from St. Petersburg by K. S. Eremeev. A few days later I was released and went back to Russia for the purpose of underground work, but at the border in Verzhbolovo I was arrested and sent along a stage to Arkhangelsk province. But in Mariampol I fell ill and took to bed. By this time, the nervous shock caused by imprisonment had made itself felt. Soon I was given permission to use sanatorium treatment in the vicinity of St. Petersburg.

On February 21, 1913, I, as a student, fell under an amnesty and thanks to this I again acquired the right to reside in St. Petersburg. Of course, I immediately resumed my collaboration with Pravda, which, due to censorship persecution, was then published under different, often changing names. My participation in the newspaper intensified in the spring of 1914, since the arrival of L. B. Kamenev from abroad. By this time, my large articles began to appear, written at the request of the editors and usually published in feuilletons in the basement of the newspaper. Almost every day I visited Pravda and from time to time the editorial office of Prosveshcheniye, where my articles were also published. With the onset of the war, Pravda was destroyed. It was only by chance that I was not arrested, because on the day of the defeat, having finished my business earlier than usual, I went home, as it later turned out, shortly before the police arrived.

From the first days of the imperialist massacre, I took an internationalist, Leninist position. Participated in the collective drafting of Vandervelde's response. The war turned me, like other contemporaries, into a military man. Having long been drawn to the elements of the sea, I chose the navy as my type of weapon and, despite the lack of a certificate of political reliability, I entered certain midshipman classes. Over the years, I was able to go on two voyages to the Far East and visit Japan, Korea and remote Kamchatka. The February Revolution found me in the midshipmen's classes, where final exams were taking place at that time.

I immediately contacted the PC and the newspaper Pravda, which had re-emerged like a phoenix from the ashes. Here I published a whole series of articles until, finally, in mid-March I was sent by the editors of Pravda to Kronstadt to lead the local party organ “Voice of Truth”. In red Kronstadt I had to, not limit myself to the editor. newspapers, plunge into the thick of party and Soviet work. In Kronstadt, a friendly, close-knit group of leaders was formed, which included: S. G. Roshal, Kirill (Orlov), P. I. Smirnov and I, and a little later we were joined by: Smilga, Deshevoy, Bregman and Flerovsky.

Soon I was elected comrade. chairman Kronstadt Council (chaired by the non-party Lamanov, who later, in 1921, revealed his White Guard face in the Kronstadt rebellion). After the July speech, in which, together with other Kronstadters, I had to take an active part, I was arrested, put in “Kresty” and brought to trial in the “Bolshevik case.” On October 13th he was released and a few days later received from the Center. The party committee went on a business trip to Novgorod and Luga to prepare the proletarian revolution.

In the October Revolution he took a direct part in the battles near Pulkovo. After the defeat of the gangs of Kerensky and Krasnov, he was sent at the head of a detachment of sailors to help red Moscow. Soon, naval general was summoned from Moscow and appointed commissar. headquarters, then a member of the board of the naval commissariat and in 1918 he replaced. People's Commissar for Maritime Affairs. In June 1918, he traveled on a secret mission from the Council of People's Commissars to Novorossiysk to sink the Black Sea Fleet in order to prevent it from becoming prey to the imperialists. powers In July 1918, I was sent to the Czech-Slovak front as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front, and on August 22 I was appointed commander of the Volga military flotilla, which on September 10 took a direct part in the capture of Kazan, and then, with daily fighting in pursuit of the White Guard. flotilla, made a trip along the Kama, and she managed to drive enemy ships into the Belaya River and force them to take refuge in Ufa.

The liberation of the Kama from the White Guard gangs was carried up above Sarapul to Galyan, where we were caught by the beginning of the ice drift, which is why the Red Volga Flotilla had to urgently go to wintering in Nizhny Novgorod. After the end of the campaign, I returned to Moscow, where, as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, I took part in its meetings and, together with the late Vasily Mikhailovich Altvater, headed the naval commissariat.

At the end of December 1918, on the destroyer Spartak, I went on reconnaissance to Revel and came across a significantly superior English squadron, consisting of five light cruisers armed with six-inch artillery. While fighting back towards Kronstadt, our destroyer suffered an unexpected accident, crashing into a stone bank and breaking all the propeller blades. Thus, being captured by the English, I was taken by them to London and put in Brixton prison. After five months of captivity, I was released in exchange for 19 British officers who had been detained in Soviet Russia. The exchange took place in Beloostrov on May 27, 1919. Immediately after returning from England, I was appointed commander of the Caspian flotilla. Soon the Volga Flotilla, which had returned from the Kama, was added to it, and the combined river and sea forces received the name Volga-Caspian Military Flotilla. Our ships had to operate in separate detachments over a vast area from Saratov on the Volga to Lagan and Ganyushkin on the Caspian Sea. The flotilla had to endure the heaviest battles near Tsaritsyn and Cherny Yar. In both cases, the ships of the flotilla were subjected to almost daily air raids. However, through the combined actions of the Red Army and the Red Flotilla, we managed to defend Soviet Astrakhan, which, being surrounded by the White Guards, hung on one thin thread of the railway connecting it with Saratov. Finally, in 1920, the occupation of Fort Aleksandrovsky with the capture of the remnants of the White Ural Cossacks and the expulsion of the British from Anzeli completed the flotilla’s military campaign.

During the Civil War I was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner. In June 1920 I was appointed commander of the Baltic Fleet. In connection with our attack on Warsaw, Red Kronstadt was fully armed to receive English guests. But, to the great disappointment of the Baltic sailors, Lloyd George did not send a single English ship to the Kronstadt waters.

In March 1921, due to the end of the civil war and the transition to peaceful construction, I was demobilized and was appointed plenipotentiary envoy to Afghanistan. In December 1923 I returned to Moscow. Consisted of responsibility. editor of "Young Guard", "Krasn. Novi" and the publishing house "Moscow Worker". In the spring of 1926, he went to Afghanistan for the second time as chairman of our delegation to the mixed Union-Afghan commission.

[In 1930-1938, plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Estonia, Denmark, Bulgaria. Since 1938 in exile. Expelled from the party in absentia, declared an “enemy of the people,” and deprived of Soviet citizenship. Rehabilitated posthumously.]

Raskolnikov, Fedor Fedorovich

[pseudonym Ilyina, 1892-] - Soviet writer and journalist. Comes from a family of clergy. Member of the CPSU(b) since 1910. From 1911-1914 he worked in the party press. During the war of 1914 - in the navy. After the February Revolution, he headed the Kronstadt newspaper "Voice of Truth" and was chairman of the Kronstadt Council. In the October days, he took part in the battles near Pulkovo. After October - Commissar of the Naval General Staff, Deputy People's Commissar, Commander of the Volga Flotilla, member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front. In 1919 - participant in the capture of Kazan, commander of the Caspian flotilla. In 1920 - commander of the Baltic Fleet. From 1921-1923 - plenipotentiary representative in Afghanistan. From 1924-1930 he edited the magazine “Krasnaya Nov”, was a member of the board of the People's Commissariat for Education and the head of the Main Art Department. From 1930-1934 - in diplomatic work. Awarded two Orders of the Red Banner.

The attention of R. the writer is concentrated in ch. arr. on historically significant events in public life. He writes the tragedy "Robespierre", the tragedy of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which came into conflict both with the needs of the big bourgeoisie consolidating its dominance, and with the needs of the proletarian working masses. Later he gives a series of essays and stories under the general title “Stories of Midshipman Ilyin,” in which he reproduces bright pages of the recent past - the dispersal of the constituent assembly, the death of the Black Sea Fleet, the advancement and actions of the Caspian flotilla, etc. events in which he himself was a participant, " Midshipman Ilyin." The breadth of the writer's political and historical range makes his works deeply meaningful. However, R. lacks the vividness and realism of the image. In the tragedy "Robespierre", the main character of the tragedy, Robespierre, like his closest ally Saint-Just, did not receive realism. development. In "Stories of Midshipman Ilyin" R. is too laconic, sometimes gives a protocol record of events and does not always reveal the causality of what happened. Thus, the story about the death of the Black Sea Fleet does not reveal the historical necessity of this act. Raskolnikov's stories are fragmentary and can serve as a source for creating broad epic and dramatic stories. canvases R. reworked Tolstoy's novel "Resurrection" for the stage (staged at the Gorky MXAT). Trying not to deviate from the text of the novel, R. created a play that breaks up into a number of episodes, held together by the role of the presenter.

Bibliography: I. Robespierre, Social tragedy in 4 days and 6 cards, "Red New Year", 1930, I; The same, dept. ed.; Robespierre, GIHL, Leningrad - Moscow, 1931; Kronstadt residents. From Memoirs (1917), ed. "Young Guard", Moscow, 1931; The same, 2nd edition, Moscow, 1932; Stories of midshipman Ilyin, ed. "Soviet Literature", Moscow, 1934; Stories of the Komflot, publication of Zhurgazoobedinenie, Moscow, 1934.

II. Reviews: Hun, “At a Literary Post,” 1930, VII (about “Robespierre”); Nanich R., “Art”, 1929, I - II (about the play “Resurrection”); Polyakova M., “New World”, 1934, II; Krasnostavsky M., “Banner”, 1934, V; Vishnevsky Vs., "Fiction", 1934, V; Budnev V., “Literary Newspaper”, 1934, March 12; Kurt Leonid, gas. "Red Star", 1934, August 2, etc.

N. Gnedina.

(Lit. enc.)

Rask O Lnikov, Fedor Fedorovich

(Ilyin). Genus. 1892, d. 1939. Diplomat, politician. He was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front, was Deputy People's Commissar for Naval Affairs (from 1918), commander of the Volga-Caspian Military Flotilla (1919-20), and the Baltic Fleet (1920-21). Represented Soviet Russia in Afghanistan, Estonia, Denmark, Bulgaria (1921-23, 1930-38, plenipotentiary). Since 1938 in exile (did not return to his homeland). He was declared an "enemy of the people" in absentia.

Large biographical encyclopedia. 2009 .

The revolutionary fire brightly illuminated figures still known to everyone: Lenin, Trotsky, Kerensky and several other heroes “promoted” by historians. Behind them are those who really moved the levers of the events of 1917.

One of them is a man with the “Dostoevsky” party nickname, for whom the revolution became both a crime and a punishment.

Midshipman, forward!

Born in 1892, Fyodor Ilyin began life with a keen sense of resentment. He could fit into the capital's elite: his father was a popular clergyman in St. Petersburg, his mother was the daughter of a general. But due to conventions, they could not marry, so Fyodor and his younger brother Alexander lived with the stigma of being illegitimate.

Fearing dismissal, Protodeacon Fyodor Petrov visited the family in secret; his unmarried wife Antonina had to work all day in the shop and send the children to an orphanage. When Fedor Jr. was finishing school, his father, accused of raping a maid, committed suicide; By the way, the grandfather and uncle of the future hero of the revolution also committed suicide because of women. From the “leaden abominations of life,” the teenager hid in books, identifying himself with their heroes - victims of injustice, taking revenge on fate and their offenders.

At the age of 17, he entered the Polytechnic Institute, where student Scriabin (future politician V.M. Molotov) involved him in the Bolshevik cell. After articles in the party press, Fedor was arrested and sentenced to exile, but his mother, having developed “general” connections, managed to leave him in the capital for treatment. Brother Alexander, also a Bolshevik, was expelled from the gymnasium and went to study in Switzerland, for which he received the pseudonym Ilyin-Zhenevsky. Fedor, in new articles in Pravda, also took a pseudonym in honor of one of his favorite heroes - Rodion Raskolnikov.

The young man, according to the party line, avoided the First World War by enrolling in midshipman school. He went to Japan on a training ship and spent a year and a half on the voyage. The February events took the half-educated midshipman by surprise, as did the royal authorities, who were confident to the last that the people were loyal to them.

For Fyodor, who was bored in the cold midshipman classes, the revolution became a holiday.

Kronstadt, "Crosses", Trotsky

Later, in the book “Kronstadt and St. Petersburg in 1917,” he wrote: “With a joyful feeling I left the musty barracks to join the rebellious people.” On February 28, Raskolnikov went to the Tauride Palace, where the Provisional Committee of the Duma and the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies were meeting simultaneously. Joyful chaos reigned there, and no one responded to rumors that large forces of monarchist-minded troops were approaching the city.

Raskolnikov decided that only the Bolsheviks could defend the revolution, and went to Kronverksky Prospekt, where the few party members who survived the arrests were meeting. But there he saw the same chaos: the “right” supported the Duma, the “left”, led by Podvoisky, demanded the continuation of the revolution. On March 2, the day of the Tsar’s abdication, at the first meeting of the Petrograd Committee (Peka, as they said then), Fyodor decisively supported the left.

On March 17, the Bolsheviks sent Raskolnikov to Kronstadt to edit the party newspaper “Voice of Truth” - the comrades remembered his literary abilities. Having first-hand knowledge of sea life, Fyodor quickly became one of the sailors, and at the same time became friends with the leader of the local Bolsheviks, Semyon (Sima) Roshal. So strong that they were sometimes considered one person named Raskolnikov-Roshal - right up until the death of 23-year-old Semyon at the hands of the whites. Having actually become the masters of Kronstadt, Roshal and Raskolnikov, not without success, tried to win over the sailors of Helsingfors and Revel, the main bases of the Baltic Fleet, to their side.

And the opportunity to measure strength with the authorities came in July, when the anarchist sailors were kicked out of the mansion they had captured. The Bolsheviks decided to stand up for the “offended” and staged a crowded demonstration in the center of Kronstadt, where Raskolnikov brought 10 thousand sailors with weapons. But there were more government supporters: after indiscriminate shooting, the demonstrators dispersed, and the next day arrests began.

Fyodor, together with Roshal, was put in “Kresty”, where Trotsky also ended up. Raskolnikov became his ardent admirer, which later cost him his career, and ultimately his life.

Volleys on the Cossacks

After the Kornilov rebellion, the Provisional Government tried to make peace with the Bolsheviks and released them from prison. On October 11, the liberated Raskolnikov went from Kresty to the party committee, which was then located in Smolny. There he learned that the Bolsheviks had created the Military Revolutionary Committee - formally to protect against the already arrested Kornilov, but in fact to take power. On paper it was led by the left Socialist Revolutionary Lazimir, in reality by the staunch Leninists Podvoisky, Antonov-Ovseenko and Trotsky’s “adjutant” Lashevich.

They sent Raskolnikov to the west - to Novgorod and Luga in order to win over the local garrisons. While giving a speech at the Luga circus, Fyodor caught a cold and went to bed. And on October 26 he was awakened by the news: at night the workers and Kronstadt sailors were without him! - they took Winter Palace and arrested the Provisional Government.

Forgetting about his illness, Fedor rushed on the afternoon of October 26 to the excited Smolny. By this time, Kerensky, who had left the city, convinced the commander of the Cossack division, Krasnov, to move to Petrograd. The Cossacks occupied Gatchina and Tsarskoe Selo without a fight. It was Raskolnikov who saved the newborn Bolshevik regime at this critical moment - at his request, ships from Helsingfors and Kronstadt approached St. Petersburg, and the guns removed from them were installed on the Pulkovo Heights.

A couple of shots were enough for the Cossacks, who were not eager to fight, to ask for peace. Krasnov was pardoned and went to the Don to continue the fight. And the Bolsheviks appointed Raskolnikov, who distinguished himself, as deputy people's commissar of naval forces and gave him a new important assignment. The Constituent Assembly, which opened in the Tauride Palace, threatened to remove the Bolsheviks from power. In the conference room, Raskolnikov announced the departure of the Bolshevik delegation, and then ordered Zheleznyakov to clear the room.

Thus, the “question of power” in Russia was resolved for the next seven decades.

Lenin's Emissary

The name of Raskolnikov has long been overshadowed by his famous comrades. But in the years when the fate of the new government was being decided, he was at the forefront of the main events. It was he who was sent by Lenin to Novorossiysk in the summer of 1918 with instructions to scuttle the Black Sea Fleet so that it would not be captured by the Germans or Entente forces. Having completed this mission, the midshipman immediately went to the Volga - there was a threat of a breakthrough by the rebel Czechoslovaks. Raskolnikov led the water flotilla, and it helped the Red Army liberate Kazan. And then he took part in suppressing the uprising of Izhevsk workers, followed by two destroyers to establish Soviet power in Tallinn...

True, along the way, Raskolnikov and his ships were captured by the British; He spent six months as a prisoner of war in a London prison, but on Lenin’s orders he was exchanged for British officers captured by the Bolsheviks...

By a historical irony of fate, the midshipman’s rapid career growth was interrupted in the same Kronstadt. Raskolnikov was appointed to command the Baltic Fleet, which had been reduced to a pitiful state: without a material base, without experienced commanders and sailors who had perished in the war. Their place was taken by recent peasants, dissatisfied with the Bolshevik surplus appropriation system. The result was an uprising in Kronstadt, in which many of Raskolnikov’s old acquaintances also took part.

The Komflot personally went to attack the fortress with a rifle in his hands - but still he was “thundered” from his post. He, a combat sailor, was humiliatingly transferred to diplomatic work, and, moreover, to wild Afghanistan. His wife, St. Petersburg poetess Larisa Reisner, who also managed to fight in the Civil War, went with him. But she quickly escaped from the Afghan wilderness and went to the prominent Bolshevik Radek. Raskolnikov consoled himself with his new marriage to a girl with the exotic name Muse...

"Open letter to Stalin"

He headed the magazine "Young Guard" and the publishing house "Moskovsky Rabochiy", wrote plays and memoirs about the revolution. Then he was thrown into diplomatic work again - ambassador to Estonia, Denmark, Bulgaria. His comrades in the revolution disappeared one after another, his idol Trotsky long ago became an “enemy of the people.”

On the way to Moscow, he read in the newspaper that he too had been declared an “enemy” - and that same day he fled, covering his tracks.

In September 1939, Fyodor Raskolnikov died in a clinic in Nice: according to his wife, from pneumonia, according to many, at the hands of Soviet agents. After his death, his “Open Letter to Stalin” appeared in the emigrant press, which was published in the USSR only during the years of perestroika.

Forgotten heroes of two revolutions

Nikolai Ilyich PODVOSKY (1880 - 1948)

Coming from a family of Ukrainian priests, he is a veteran of the Bolshevik Party. In February 1917, he captured the Kshesinskaya palace and made it the party headquarters; in October he was deputy chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee, one of the organizers of the storming of the Winter Palace. He became the first People's Commissar for Military Affairs, soon losing this post to Trotsky. He came up with the emblem of the Red Army - a five-pointed star. During the Civil War he did not show himself and was relegated to secondary positions. Stealth and addiction to alcohol helped him avoid repression.

Mikhail Mikhailovich LASHEVICH (1884 - 1928)

The son of an Odessa merchant, a Bolshevik, participant in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. In May 1917 he became secretary of the Petrograd Soviet and leader of its Bolshevik faction. As a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee, on the night of October 25 he commanded the seizure of mail, telegraph, and bridges. During the Civil War - commander of several armies, later - deputy people's commissar for military and naval affairs. For his closeness to Trotsky, he was removed from all posts and sent on a diplomatic mission to Harbin, where he died under mysterious circumstances.

Georgy Ivanovich BLAGONRAVOV (1894 - 1938)

A nobleman, ensign of the rear unit, who became a Bolshevik in March 1917, and in October - commissar of the Peter and Paul Fortress. He fired cannons at the Winter Palace, after the victory of the uprising he was commissioner for the protection of Petrograd. Since 1918 he worked in the Cheka, organized the work of the railways. Shot during the Great Terror.

Yuri Vladimirovich LOMONOSOV (1876 - 1952)

A railway engineer from the nobility, a distant relative of M.V. Lomonosov. He was a member of the leadership of the Ministry of Railways. Being a convinced opponent of the monarchy, he took part in the preparation of the February Revolution. Together with Duma Commissioner Bublikov, he brought the railways under the control of the new government. In the summer of 1917, he left for the United States to purchase steam locomotives; under the Bolsheviks, he returned to Russia, where, with Lenin’s consent, he undertook a number of adventurous economic projects. After their failure, he fled to England.

Alexander Yakovlevich AROSEV (1890 - 1938)

The son of a tailor, a Bolshevik, a talented writer. In October 1917, he commanded detachments of Red Guards during the Moscow Uprising and ordered the Kremlin to be shot from guns. Later he worked in the Cheka and was a Soviet plenipotentiary representative in a number of European countries. Died during the years of the Great Terror. Father of actresses Elena and Olga Arosev.

Anatoly Grigorievich ZHELEZNYAKOV (1895 - 1919)

An anarchist sailor, he deserted from the fleet during the First World War; in the fall of 1917, at the head of a detachment of Baltic seamen, he participated in the uprisings in Petrograd, Moscow, and Kharkov. His fighters, who had a reputation for murderers and robbers, dispersed the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. Soon the detachment was disarmed for banditry, and Zheleznyakov was sent to the front, where he, commanding an armored train, was mortally wounded in a battle with the whites. “Partisan sailor Zheleznyak” became a folklore character, the hero of a famous song.

In 1910 he joined the RSDLP(b). In 1911 he was an employee of the Zvezda newspaper; in 1912 he became the first secretary of the Pravda newspaper. He was arrested and sentenced to administrative deportation. At the beginning of 1913 he was released under an amnesty.

In 1914 he was drafted into the navy. He campaigned among sailors, wrote proclamations, and participated in the legal Petrograd publishing house Volna. In 1914-1917 he studied in separate midshipman classes in Petrograd.

After the February Revolution of 1917, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party sent Raskolnikov to Kronstadt to the editorial office of the Bolshevik newspaper "Voice of Truth". He was a comrade (deputy) of the chairman of the Kronstadt Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, chairman of the city committee of the RSDLP (b), one of the leaders of the political life of Kronstadt.

He led a column of sailors at an anti-government demonstration during the July events of 1917, was arrested, and released in October.

Since October 1917, Raskolnikov was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. After the Bolsheviks seized power, he took part in the battles near Pulkovo against the troops of General Pyotr Krasnov, then, at the head of a detachment of sailors, he went to support the revolution in Moscow.

In November 1917, he was appointed commissar at the Naval General Staff, and by a resolution of the All-Russian Congress of Navy Sailors “for devotion to the people and the revolution” he was promoted from midshipman to lieutenant.

From January 1918, he served as Deputy People's Commissar for Maritime Affairs and a member of the board of the Maritime Commissariat.

One of the leaders of the "Ice" campaign of the Baltic Fleet ships from Revel to Helsingfors and Kronstadt (February-May 1918). Raskolnikov became one of the organizers of the sinking of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet in Novorossiysk in order to prevent their capture by the Germans (June 1918).

Since July - member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front, formed in connection with the performance of the Czechoslovak Corps, since August - commander of the Volga Military Flotilla. Participated in the capture of Kazan and the liberation of Kama. In October-December - member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic.

In December 1918, he led the reconnaissance cruise of the destroyer "Spartak" near Revel, where the ship crashed and was captured by the British. After almost five months in a London prison, Raskolnikov was exchanged for 19 captured British officers.

In June-July 1919 - commander of the Astrakhan-Caspian flotilla. He took part in the battles of Tsaritsyn, Cherny Yar, and in the defense of Astrakhan. After the capture of Baku and the proclamation of Soviet power in Azerbaijan, he was appointed commander of the naval forces of the Caspian Sea, and then commander of the Azerbaijani fleet. He led the operations to capture Fort Aleksandrovsky and the Persian port of Anzeli, where the White Guard navy was based.

From June 1920 to January 1921 he was commander of the Baltic Fleet.

In 1921-1923 he served as plenipotentiary representative of the RSFSR in Afghanistan.

Since 1924, Raskolnikov worked in the Executive Committee of the Comintern under the name Petrov.

In 1924-1926 he was the editor of the magazine "Young Guard", in 1927-1930 - "Krasnaya Nov". He was the editor-in-chief of the Moscow Worker publishing house.

In 1928-1930 he was the chairman of the censorship body for control of the repertoire of theaters and the stage of the Main Repertoire Committee, the head of the Main Art Department, and a member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR.

Fyodor Raskolnikov knew several foreign languages, was the author of a number of articles, books, the play “Robespierre”, and a dramatization of Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Sunday”. Since 1934 he was a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR.

In 1930-1933, Raskolnikov was the USSR plenipotentiary representative in Estonia, in 1933-1934 - the USSR plenipotentiary representative in Denmark. From September 1934 to April 1938 - USSR Plenipotentiary Representative in Bulgaria. The NKVD authorities established surveillance of Raskolnikov “based on data that Raskolnikov, being the plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Bulgaria, kept Trotsky’s documents.”

In April 1938, on a call from the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, he left Sofia, but never returned to the USSR. Lived in Paris.

In July 1939, the Supreme Court of the USSR declared him an outlaw and deprived of Soviet citizenship. On July 26, 1939, he published a protest letter in the Parisian Russian emigrant newspaper “Last News” “How I was made an “enemy of the people”,” in which he demanded a public review of his case.

Raskolnikov died in Nice on September 12, 1939, presumably from pneumonia. According to another version, he was killed by NKVD agents.

After Raskolnikov's death, the widely known "Open Letter to Stalin" (written in August 1939) was published in France, becoming Stalin's most harsh accusation of mass repression.

In 1963 he was posthumously rehabilitated.

Fyodor Raskolnikov was married twice. The first wife is publicist, poetess, playwright Larisa Reisner (1895-1926). The second is Muse Canivez (1913-2006), author of the memoirs “The Shadow of a Fleeting Life.” Raskolnikov had a son, Fyodor (1937-1939), and a daughter, Muza (1940-1986), who became a historian.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources

Raskolnikov, Fyodor Fedorovich(1892–1939), (real name Ilyin). Born on January 28 (February 9), 1892 in St. Petersburg in the family of an archdeacon. He graduated from a real school, studied at the economics department of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, where already in his first year he became involved in revolutionary activities.

In 1910 he joined the RSDLP(b). He collaborated with the Bolshevik newspaper Zvezda. In 1912 he became the first secretary of the newspaper Pravda. He was arrested and sentenced to administrative deportation. Released under an amnesty at the beginning of 1913. In 1914 he was drafted into the navy. He campaigned among sailors, wrote proclamations, and participated in the legal Petrograd publishing house Volna. In February 1917 he graduated from Separate Midshipman classes.

After the February Revolution, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party was sent to Kronstadt. He was a comrade (deputy) chairman of the Kronstadt Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, chairman of the city committee of the RSDLP (b), one of the leaders of the political life of Kronstadt.

Since October 1917, Raskolnikov was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. After the Bolsheviks seized power, he took part in the battles near Pulkovo against the troops of General P.N. Krasnov, then, at the head of a detachment of sailors, he went to support the revolution in Moscow. In November 1917, he was appointed commissar at the Naval General Staff, and by a resolution of the All-Russian Congress of Navy Sailors “for devotion to the people and the revolution” he was promoted from midshipman to lieutenant.

He was elected to the Constituent Assembly from the Bolsheviks in the Petrograd province. On behalf of the Bolshevik faction, he announced a declaration on the withdrawal of the Bolsheviks from the Constituent Assembly.

From January 1918 he served as Deputy People's Commissar for Maritime Affairs and a member of the board of the Maritime Commissariat. In June 1918 he was sent to the Volga to assist in organizing the Volga military flotilla. Soon he was sent to Novorossiysk to monitor the implementation of the Soviet government's decision to sink the Black Sea Fleet due to the threat of its capture by Germany. He achieved a turning point in the mood of the ship’s crews and ensured that this operation was carried out.

In July 1918, Raskolnikov was sent to the Czechoslovak front, appointed a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front, and then commander of the Volga Military Flotilla. Participated in the capture of Kazan and the liberation of Kama.

In December 1918, he led the expedition of a detachment of special purpose ships near Revel, but the operation ended unsuccessfully. The destroyer "Spartak", on which Raskolnikov was, suffered an accident and was captured by the British. After almost five months in a London prison, Raskolnikov was exchanged for 19 English officers.

Upon returning from England in June 1919, he was appointed commander of the Volga-Caspian military flotilla. He took part in the battles of Tsaritsyn, Cherny Yar, and in the defense of Astrakhan. After the capture of Baku and the proclamation of Soviet power in Azerbaijan, he was appointed commander of the naval forces of the Caspian Sea, and then commander of the Azerbaijani fleet. He led the operations to capture Fort Aleksandrovsky and the Persian port of Anzeli, where the White Guard navy was based. From June 1920 to January 1921 - commander of the Baltic Fleet.

In 1921–1924 - plenipotentiary representative of the RSFSR in Afghanistan. He enjoyed authority among the Afghan government, as evidenced by his being awarded the Afghan Order. At a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on August 16, 1923, the decision was made: “a) Confirm the inadmissibility of Soviet diplomats receiving insignia from the government of capitalist states; b) As an exception, allow Comrade Raskolnikov to accept the order from the Afghan government, as the government of a country oppressed by capitalism.”

In the internal party struggle that unfolded in the early 1920s (discussion about trade unions), at one time he supported L.D. Trotsky, as he wrote in his autobiography compiled in 1927: “During the discussion about trade unions, I had hesitations, and I made a major political mistake , supporting Trotsky's anti-party platform... I returned to Moscow at the beginning of the debate of 1923–1924. Under the influence of Comrade Stalin, who received me at his apartment, I became convinced of the correctness of the general line of the party and took an active part in the press and at meetings in the fight against Trotskyism.”

Since 1924, Raskolnikov worked in the Executive Committee of the Comintern under the name Petrov. He knew several foreign languages, was the author of a number of articles, books, the play “Robespierre”, a dramatization of the novel by Leo Tolstoy Sunday. In 1924–1930 he became editor of the magazines “Young Guard” and “Krasnaya Nov”, editor-in-chief of the publishing house “Moskovsky Rabochiy”. In 1928–1930 he was appointed chairman of the censorship body for control of the repertoire of theaters and the stage of the Main Repertoire Committee, then the head of the Main Art Department, a member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. Since 1934 he was a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR.

In February - July 1926, on behalf of the government, he traveled as chairman of the Special Soviet-Afghan Commission to Kabul.

In 1930–1933, Raskolnikov was the USSR plenipotentiary representative in Estonia. In 1933–1934, USSR plenipotentiary representative in Denmark. From September 1934 to April 1938 - USSR Plenipotentiary Representative in Bulgaria. The NKVD authorities established surveillance of Raskolnikov “based on data that Raskolnikov, being the plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Bulgaria, kept Trotsky’s documents.”

In April 1938, on a call from the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, he left Sofia with his wife and child, but never returned to the USSR, anticipating an imminent arrest. He lived in Paris, from where he wrote letters to Stalin and M.M. Litvinov, asking to leave him Soviet citizenship and explaining the “temporary delay” abroad with various formal reasons. In July 1939, the Supreme Court of the USSR declared him an outlaw (the draft verdict was approved by Stalin and V.M. Molotov).

Shortly before his death, Raskolnikov handed over to the editors of the Parisian magazine "New Russia" his last work - the famous Open letter to Stalin, in which he accused Stalin of the death of thousands of outstanding people and betrayal of the revolution. “Stalin, you declared me an outlaw,” Raskolnikov wrote. “With this act, you equalized me in rights—more precisely, in lack of rights—with all Soviet citizens who, under your rule, live outside the law. For my part, I respond in full reciprocity: I return your entrance ticket to the “kingdom of socialism” that you built and break with your regime... You cultivate politics without ethics, power without honesty, socialism without love for people... Nobody in Soviet The Union does not feel safe. No one goes to bed knowing whether he will be able to avoid arrest at night. There is no mercy for anyone. The right and the guilty, the hero of October and the enemy of the revolution, the old Bolshevik and the non-party, the collective farm peasant and the plenipotentiary, the people's commissar and the worker, the intellectual and the marshal of the Soviet Union - all are equally subject to the blows of your whip, all are spinning in a devilish bloody carousel. At the author's request, the letter was published after his death - October 1, 1939.