Evgenia Bosh

Evgenia Bosh was born in Ochakiv, Ukraine, on 11th August, 1879. Her father was an immigrant from Luxemburg and according to her biographer: "Her childhood was very unhappy, filled with arguments and fights. When she was seventeen her parents choose as a husband a much older nobleman from a neighbouring estate. The wilful daughter rebelled, eloping with Petr Bosh, who owned a small manufacturing business."

Over the next few years she had two daughters. Evgenia, like her sister, Elena, became involved in politics and joined the Social Democratic Labour Party. A member of the Bolshevik she helped to organize industrial workers in Kiev. In 1911 she met the Yuri Piatakov. According to Kathy Fairfax, the author of Comrades in Arms: Bolshevik Women in the Russian Revolution (1999): "In 1911 Bosh met Yuri Piatakov, who had come to reorganize the Kiev committee, and they soon fell in love. Together they shared the leadership of the Kiev committee and within a year had created an organisation of three local committees and 12 workers' circles. They were arrested in June 12 and after 18 months in prison, were exiled to Siberia."

In 1912 the couple escaped from Siberia and joined Lenin and his group of revolutionaries in Paris. Lenin was very impressed with Piatakov and described him as "undoubtedly a person of outstanding strength of purpose and abilities." However, under the influence of Bosh, the two men fell out on the "national question". As Kathy Fairfax points out: "With her Ukrainian experience Bosh felt that nationalism of proletarian internationalism while Lenin considered that the nationalism of the oppressed had a revolutionary potential, especially in the tsarist empire."

On 26th February 1917 Tsar Nicholas II ordered the Duma to close down. Members refused and they continued to meet and discuss what they should do. Michael Rodzianko, President of the Duma, sent a telegram to the Tsar suggesting that he appoint a new government led by someone who had the confidence of the people. When the Tsar did not reply, the Duma nominated a Provisional Government headed by Prince George Lvov. The High Command of the Russian Army now feared a violent revolution and on 28th February suggested that Tsar should abdicate in favour of a more popular member of the royal family. Attempts were now made to persuade Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich to accept the throne. He refused and on the 1st March, 1917, the Tsar abdicated leaving the Provisional Government in control of the country.

Prince Lvov allowed all political prisoners to return to their homes. Bosh and Yuri Piatakov moved back to the Ukraine and headed the Kiev Military-Revolutionary Committee and led troops against the government of Alexander Kerensky. After the arrival of the Red Army Piatakov became minister of the interior in the new Soviet government in the Ukraine. Bosh became prime minister.

When Lenin took power he demobilized the army and announced that he planned to seek an armistice with Germany. In December, 1917, Leon Trotsky led the Russian delegation at Brest-Litovsk that was negotiating with representatives from Germany and Austria. Trotsky had the difficult task of trying to end Russian participation in the First World War without having to grant territory to the Central Powers. By employing delaying tactics Trotsky hoped that socialist revolutions would spread from Russia to Germany and Austria-Hungary before he had to sign the treaty.

After nine weeks of discussions without agreement, the German Army was ordered to resume its advance into Russia. On 3rd March 1918, with German troops moving towards Petrograd, Lenin ordered Trotsky to accept the terms of the Central Powers. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty resulted in the Russians surrendering the Ukraine, Finland, the Baltic provinces, the Caucasus and Poland.

Bosh and Yuri Piatakov were appalled by this decision and resigned from the government. They now joined the Red Army led by Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko who was operating in the eastern region of the Ukraine. As Kathy Fairfax, the author of Comrades in Arms: Bolshevik Women in the Russian Revolution (1999) points out: "Despite the treaty, they attempted to halt the spread of the German occupation eastwards. It was a fruitless endeavour. For a month they harried the Germans along the railway lines east of Kiev, retreating until they reached Red-controlled territory."

During the Civil War Piatakov was the head of the Provisional Worker’s and Peasant’s Government formed by the Bolsheviks. Leon Trotsky admitted that Piatakov provided a good administration: "In the Ukraine he enjoyed considerable influence, not by accident but because he is a fairly well-educated Marxist, especially in the realm of economics, and is undoubtedly a good administrator with a reserve of will. In the early years Piatakov showed revolutionary energy, but it later changed to a bureaucratic conservatism".

In March 1919 Yuri Piatakov attended the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, where he unsuccessfully opposed Lenin's position on national self determination. Lenin continued to have faith in Piatakov and in 1921 was placed in charge of the management of Donbass coal mining industry. The following year he was appointed as deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the Soviet Union.

In October 1923, Piatakov drafted a statement that was published under the name Platform of the 46 which criticized the economic policies of the party leadership and accused it of stifling the inner-party debate. It echoed the call made by Leon Trotsky, a week earlier, calling for a sharp change of direction by the party. The statement was also signed b Bosh, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, Andrey Bubnov, Ivan Smirnov, Lazar Kaganovich, and forty other leading Bolsheviks.

"The extreme seriousness of the position compels us (in the interests of our Party, in the interests of the working class) to state openly that a continuation of the policy of the majority of the Politburo threatens grievous disasters for the whole Party. The economic and financial crisis beginning at the end of July of the present year, with all the political, including internal Party, consequences resulting from it, has inexorably revealed the inadequacy of the leadership of the Party, both in the economic domain, and especially in the domain of internal Party, relations."

The document then went on to complain about the lack of debate in the Communist Party: "Similarly in the domain of internal party relations we see the same incorrect leadership paralyzing and breaking up the Party; this appears particularly clearly in the period of crisis through which we are passing. We explain this not by the political incapacity of the present leaders of the Party; on the contrary, however much we differ from them in our estimate of the position and in the choice of means to alter it, we assume that the present leaders could not in any conditions fail to be appointed by the Party to the out-standing posts in the workers’ dictatorship. We explain it by the fact that beneath the external form of official unity we have in practice a one-sided recruitment of individuals, and a direction of affairs which is one-sided and adapted to the views and sympathies of a narrow circle. As the result of a Party leadership distorted by such narrow considerations, the Party is to a considerable extent ceasing to be that living independent collectivity which sensitively seizes living reality because it is bound to this reality with a thousand threads."

Isaac Deutscher, the author of Stalin (1949) has argued: "Among the signatories were: Piatakov, one of the two ablest leaders of the young generation mentioned in Lenin's testament, Preobrazhensky and Serebriakov, former secretaries of the Central Committee, Antonov-Ovseenko, the military leader of the October revolution, Smirnov, Osinsky, Bubnov, Sapronov, Muralov, Drobnis, and others, distinguished leaders in the civil war, men of brain and character. Some of them had led previous oppositions against Lenin and Trotsky, expressing the malaise that made itself felt in the party as its leadership began to sacrifice first principles to expediency. Fundamentally, they were now voicing that same malaise which was growing in proportion to the party's continued departure from some of its first principles. It is not certain whether Trotsky directly instigated their demonstration." Lenin commented that Piatakov might be "very able but not to be relied upon in a serious political matter".

By 1924 it became clear that Joseph Stalin was the dominant force in the government. Bosh now withdrew from active politics and devoted her time to writing a history of the Russian Revolution in the Ukraine. Her biographer, Kathy Fairfax, argues: "Her work was harshly critical of much of the Bolshevik leadership in the Ukraine in this period. The sombre mood of her book reflected her state of mind in 1924 as the NEP threw up new bourgeoise and careerist lawyers and the left opposition within the party was defeated by Stalin's bureaucratic-apparatus faction."

In January 1925, Evgenia Bosh, was devastated by the news that Leon Trotsky had been removed from the leadership of the Red Army. Aware that Stalin was now in complete control of the Soviet Union, she decided to kill herself. Her friend, Evgeni Preobrazhensky wrote: "In her character she was made of that steel that is broken but not bent, but all these virtues were not cheap. She had to pay dearly, pay with her peace of mind, her health and her life."

Primary Sources

(1) Kathy Fairfax, Comrades in Arms: Bolshevik Women in the Russian Revolution (1999)

In 1911 Bosh met Yuri Piatakov, who had come to reorganize the Kiev committee, and they soon fell in love. Together they shared the leadership of the Kiev committee and within a year had created an organisation of three local committees and 12 workers' circles. They were arrested in June 12 and after 18 months in prison, were exiled to Siberia.

(2) Isaac Deutscher, Stalin (1949)

The triumvirs evaded the issues raised by Trotsky and charged him with malevolence, personal ambition, neglect of his duties in the Government, and so on. They accused him of trying to establish himself as Lenin's successor. This last charge was, in a sense, true, for the fight over the succession was inherent in the situation. Yet this as well as the other charges were beside the point, for the crisis in the party, as Trotsky diagnosed it, was a fact.

In the middle of this exchange forty-six prominent Communists issued a declaration the gist of which was identical with Trotsky's criticisms. Among the signatories were: Piatakov, one of the two ablest leaders of the young generation mentioned in Lenin's testament, Preobrazhensky and Serebriakov, former secretaries of the Central Committee, Antonov-Ovseenko, the military leader of the October revolution, Smirnov, Osinsky, Bubnov, Sapronov, Muralov, Drobnis, and others, distinguished leaders in the civil war, men of brain and character. Some of them had led previous oppositions against Lenin and Trotsky, expressing the malaise that made itself felt in the party as its leadership began to sacrifice first principles to expediency. Fundamentally, they were now voicing that same malaise which was growing in proportion to the party's continued departure from some of its first principles. It is not certain whether Trotsky directly instigated their demonstration. So far he conducted his dispute with the triumvirs behind the closed doors of the Politburo. The party at large was under the impression that he had all the time been whole-heartedly behind the official policy. He thus had the worst of both worlds: he had been burdened with responsibility for a policy to which he had been opposed; and he had done nothing to rally in time those who might have supported him.

(3) Yuri Piatakov, Platform of the 46 (October, 1923)

The extreme seriousness of the position compels us (in the interests of our Party, in the interests of the working class) to state openly that a continuation of the policy of the majority of the Politburo threatens grievous disasters for the whole Party. The economic and financial crisis beginning at the end of July of the present year, with all the political, including internal Party, consequences resulting from it, has inexorably revealed the inadequacy of the leadership of the Party, both in the economic domain, and especially in the domain of internal Party, relations.

The casual, unconsidered and unsystematic character of the decisions of the central committee, which has failed to make ends meet in the economic domain, has led to a position where, for all the undoubted great successes in the domain of industry, agriculture, finance and transport - successes achieved by the economy of the country spontaneously and not thanks to, but in spite of the inadequacy of, the leadership or, rather, the absence of all leadership - we not only face the prospect of a cessation of these successes, but also a grave economic crisis.

We face the approaching breakdown of the chervonets currency, which has spontaneously been transformed into a basic currency before the liquidation of the budget deficit; a credit crisis in which the State Bank can no longer without risk of a serious collapse finance either industry or trade in industrial goods or even the purchase of grain for export; a cessation of the sale of industrial goods as a result of high prices, which are explained on the one hand by the absence of planned organizational leadership in industry, and on the other hand by an incorrect credit policy; the impossibility of carrying out the programme of grain exports as a result of inability to purchase grain; extremely low prices for food products, which are damaging to the peasantry and threaten a mass contraction of agricultural production; inequalities in wage payments which provoke natural dissatisfaction among the workers with the budgetary chaos, which indirectly produces chaos in the state apparatus. ‘Revolutionary’ methods of making reductions in drawing up the budget and new and obvious reductions in carrying it out, have ceased to be transitional measures and become a regular phenomenon which constantly disturbs the state apparatus and, as a result of the absence of plan in the reductions effected, disturbs it in a casual and spontaneous manner.

These are some of the elements of the economic, credit and financial crisis which has already begun. If extensive, well-considered, planned and energetic measures are not taken forthwith, if the present absence of leadership continues, we face the possibility of an extremely acute economic breakdown, which will inevitably involve internal political complications and a complete paralysis of our external effectiveness and capacity for action. And this last, as everyone will understand, is more necessary to us now than ever; on it depends the fate of the world revolution and of the working class of all countries.

Similarly in the domain of internal party relations we see the same incorrect leadership paralyzing and breaking up the Party; this appears particularly clearly in the period of crisis through which we are passing.

We explain this not by the political incapacity of the present leaders of the Party; on the contrary, however much we differ from them in our estimate of the position and in the choice of means to alter it, we assume that the present leaders could not in any conditions fail to be appointed by the Party to the out-standing posts in the workers’ dictatorship. We explain it by the fact that beneath the external form of official unity we have in practice a one-sided recruitment of individuals, and a direction of affairs which is one-sided and adapted to the views and sympathies of a narrow circle. As the result of a Party leadership distorted by such narrow considerations, the Party is to a considerable extent ceasing to be that living independent collectivity which sensitively seizes living reality because it is bound to this reality with a thousand threads. Instead of this we observe the ever increasing, and now scarcely concealed, division of the party between a secretarial hierarchy and ‘quiet folk’, between professional party officials recruited from above and the general mass of the party which does not participate in the common life.

This is a fact which is known to every member of the Party. Members of the Party who are dissatisfied with this or that decision of the central committee or even of a provincial committee, who have this or that doubt on their minds, who privately note this or that error, irregularity or disorder, are afraid to speak about it at Party meetings, and are even afraid to talk about it in conversation, unless the partner in the conversation is thoroughly reliable from the point of view of ‘discretion’; free discussion within the party has practically vanished, the public opinion of the party is stifled. Nowadays it is not the Party, not its broad masses, who promote and choose members of the provincial committees and of the Central Committee of the RCP. On the contrary the secretarial hierarchy of the Party to an ever greater extent recruits the membership of conferences and congresses, which are becoming to an ever greater extent the executive assemblies of this hierarchy.

The régime established within the Party is completely intolerable; it destroys the independence of the Party, replacing the party by a recruited bureaucratic apparatus which acts without objection in normal times, but which inevitably fails in moments of crisis, and which threatens to become completely ineffective in the face of the serious events now impending.