Grandson of Artyom, leader of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic: The task of the DKR was to resist the separatism of Kyiv
This summer marked 95 years since the death of Artem (Fedor Sergeev), the first prime minister of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic, proclaimed in Kharkov in 1918. The republic was created on the lands of Southern Russia, which did not want to be part of the Ukrainian People's Republic, at that time an ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary. DKR considered itself part of Russia.
PolitNavigator continues to publish materials on this topic. Today we bring to your attention an interview with Artem’s grandson, Ruben Sergeev. This is actually the first interview with a Russian media in which Ruben Artemovich talks in detail about his famous grandfather.
He himself lives in Moscow. He lectures on opera and is a rocket scientist. He is not only the grandson of Artem, but also the grandson of Dolores Ibarruri, the legendary Passionaria, leader of the Spanish Communist Party, who had to emigrate after the defeat of the Republicans from Francoist Spain. Ruben’s father, Artem Sergeev, after the death of his grandfather, was adopted by Stalin, with whom Fyodor Sergeev became friends during the defense of Tsaritsyn from the White Guards, where the DKR army, led by him and Kliment Voroshilov, retreated from Kharkov and Lugansk, which fought heavy battles with the Germans and Austrians. by the Hungarians in 1918.
Ruben told PolitNavigator about how the future Prime Minister of the DKR was formed, about the Parisian period of his emigration, about how he participated in the struggle of Australian miners for their rights, about his role in the world labor movement and about his confrontation with Trotsky over about the world revolution, which may have become the cause of his death.
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How did Artem come into your life?
Through grandmother's stories. My grandfather, Fyodor Andreevich Sergeev (underground nickname Artem), died in a railway accident in 1921, and I remember myself from 1961, when Gagarin flew into space. So for us, the grandchildren - Fyodor, Lola and me - the main source of information about our grandfather was our grandmother - Artem's widow, Elizaveta Lvovna Repelskaya, among her family - Baba Lisa. Our father Artem Fedorovich still found his grandfather’s comrades and their stories. He did not remember his father; he was not even five months old on the day of the disaster.
The grandmother “introduced” Artyom into the circle of grandchildren, combining knowledge of information with solving practical problems. We don’t want to eat sour milk at night, but my grandmother says: “Fleeing from arrest, grandfather Artem lived in Paris and often went to Ilya Mechnikov for dinner. And he treated him to special curdled milk, which he himself invented. He also gave money for military training. He helped many young revolutionaries in Paris, our second Nobel laureate after Pavlov. Grandfather ate Mechnikov’s yogurt and therefore studied well. Before the war with the Nazis, your dad also ate yogurt, learned to be an artilleryman and knocked out many enemy tanks.” We ate healthy food, drew burning tanks with crosses, and learned useful information. And my grandfather seemed to be nearby.
I remember the Italian film-opera “Pagliacci” was shown on TV. Baby, I don’t want to watch. And my grandmother says to me: “Why don’t you want to listen to opera singers!? They are such good people! And one of them, our most famous, Fyodor Chaliapin, saved my grandfather from arrest. In 1905, he sang in Kharkov, and after the concert, his grandfather went on stage and gave a revolutionary speech. The police cordoned off the building, and the grandfather went to Chaliapin’s dressing room. He, like Mechnikov, sympathized with the revolutionaries and glued his grandfather’s beard on. My grandfather left the police and escaped. So let's watch the opera.
As a kid, I remember it. And opera is still one of my hobbies today. Thanks to grandpa and grandma...
Many of my grandmother’s stories were related to my grandfather’s long years of emigration to Australia, where he lived and worked for seven years.
How did Artem get there?
Here we will have to tell you in more detail. After the authorities expel nineteen-year-old student Fyodor Sergeev from the Moscow Imperial Higher Technical School for organizing a student strike with a ban on studying at higher educational institutions in Russia, he goes to study in Paris for almost a year, attends Lenin’s lectures there and becomes close to the Bolsheviks. Upon his return, he begins his activities as a professional revolutionary.
Legends are formed about his talent as an underground conspirator, who evaded the police under any circumstances. His popularity among the workers of the Kharkov and Yekaterinoslav provinces, which then included the mines and industrial enterprises of Donbass, was enormous.
In December 1905, twenty-two-year-old Artyom leads an uprising of workers in Kharkov, then the capital of the industrial south of Russia. After the defeat of the revolution, the Bolshevik leadership transferred him from Kharkov, where he was facing imminent arrest, to Perm, the industrial heart of the Urals.
In a matter of months, he becomes a recognized worker and party leader, is elected as a delegate to the congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in Stockholm, travels to Sweden and there enters the circle of the Bolshevik party leadership as the leader of the workers of the two largest industrial centers of Russia. After returning from Stockholm to the Urals, his underground work lasted more than six months, but in March 1907 he was tracked down, arrested and sentenced to hard labor in Siberia.
For three and a half years he attended prison “universities”. The last place to serve his sentence was a small village in the Irkutsk province, from where he managed to escape abroad to China and Japan and earn a ticket to Australia. The path for a fugitive political prisoner to Tsarist Russia seemed to be closed forever.
What is important for us to understand Artyom’s further fate following this first period of his life?
I think the fact of his formation as the leader of the industrial workers of the largest industrial centers of the country, the organizer of strikes and political strikes. This would serve as the basis for his subsequent work in Australia, where he gained experience that influenced the nature and style of his work after returning to Russia.
In Australia, he quickly joined the local trade union movement, becoming one of the leaders of the port workers' union, then the miners' union. He acquired an attachment to the miners as the most organized and united part of the working class during his years of work in the Donetsk basin.
It is not surprising that Artem spent most of his Australian emigration in the capital of the local coal region, the city of Brisbane, Queensland. He was greatly helped by his knowledge of the English language, which he persistently studied in hard labor in the Russian and English versions of the Gospel (even political prisoners were given holy books to read).
Along with his trade union work, he edited the newspaper The Australian Echo and became one of the founders of the social democratic movement in Australia, which Australian historians later wrote about - they also came to our home in the 1960s. Trade union work in such a country means not only strikes and political confrontation, but also negotiations with employers, seeking compromises and coordinating positions.
This experience was important for Russia, where the revolutionary movement was forged in an uncompromising struggle. I don’t want to say that my grandmother imagined my grandfather as some kind of reformist peacemaker, but she often talked about Artyom’s ability to listen to his opponents, find convincing arguments for them, avoiding unnecessary confrontations, and during the Civil War, even more blood and victims.
Was the topic of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic discussed in the family?
I even remember the first time I heard about it. My father brought my grandmother a whole pack of colorful brochures “Comrade Artem” from the printing house. It was published in 1962 “for children of primary school age,” and in it an entire chapter was devoted to the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic.
For grandma it was a real holiday. She considered the proclamation of the DKR in Kharkov, dear to her, in February 1918 and the events around the republic as one of the most striking and courageous deeds of Artyom during the years of the revolution. The history of the creation of the DKR by Artyom and his associates was hushed up during Soviet times. The reason is clear: the founders of the USSR created the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after Artem’s death.
In order to “strengthen the proletarian element,” vast territories of several provinces of the southern Russian mining region, which included the zone of the Donetsk and Krivoy Rog basins, part of the Don Army Region and other lands, were transferred to it. The history of the DKR, which opposed the growth of nationalist and separatist sentiments in Kyiv after the February Revolution and during the civil war, was an “uncomfortable” topic for Soviet ideologists, as was the topic of Ukrainian nationalism in general.
Even the brochure I mentioned said that the task of the DKR was to confuse the German military command in the conditions of the advance of German troops to the east in the winter of 1917-1918. The creation of the DKR demonstrated my grandfather’s organizational and creative qualities, his talent as a negotiator, and his intransigence towards manifestations of nationalism. Then he did everything to preserve the region as part of Russia.
In 2011, Vladimir Kornilov’s most interesting book, “The Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic: A Dream Executed,” was published in Kharkov. I recommend it to anyone interested in our history.
What other properties made Artyom stand out from the general mass of Russian revolutionaries of that time?
The revolution brought forward many talented people, and Artem was one of them. As you know, revolutions at first were always dominated by bright agitators who could motivate people to action with incendiary speech. However, later, when power was taken, the time came for the daily painstaking work of building state institutions and boosting the economy.
For many who came forward during the years of revolutionary upsurge, such work was beyond their strength and not their character. Our revolution was no exception. The fusion of revolutionary experience, talent as an agitator with the skills of everyday organizational work accumulated during the years of underground and emigration, experience of practical work in trade unions made Artem, as they would say today, one of the most sought-after leaders of the party and state.
In the last years of his life, Artem headed the Moscow organization of the Bolshevik Party, carried out extensive work on state building, restoration of industry and transport, and was one of the most prominent participants in fierce internal party discussions.
What were the main debates in the party in the last year of Artyom’s life?
We can say that in the year from the summer of 1920 to the summer of 1921, the party leadership was able, although in desperate disputes, to make decisions that determined life and, in many ways, the fate of the country. Russia was in its third year of civil war, the country was bleeding, and the revolutionary proletariat of the West, my grandmother said, still did not extend a helping hand to us. But the entire strategy of the Bolsheviks, who decided on a revolution in October 1917, was based on the confidence that the European proletariat would take up the revolutionary baton from them.
Under these conditions, it was decided to launch an attack on Warsaw. At the same time, it was supposed to “kill two birds with one stone”: to create Soviet Poland, helping to spread the fire of revolution further into Europe, and at the same time, with the help of the revolutionary Polish proletariat, to defeat the troops of the White Poles, which by the summer of 1920 had become the main force opposing the Red Army on the fields of the civil war .
The campaign against Warsaw, where my grandmother was sent to provide sanitation to the troops (a doctor by training, my grandmother was born in Bialystok and spoke good Polish), ended in a severe defeat for the Red Army.
Artem asked a lot and in detail about the vicissitudes of the Polish campaign. The conclusion, according to the grandmother, was clear: no more attacks, only long and painstaking work to raise the country, because the future of the world revolution will depend on its success and example in building a new society. As his grandmother said, Artem was ready for such creative work.
What about the party? Did the discussions continue?
Based on the results of the Polish campaign and on the basis of an analysis of the political situation in the West, Lenin substantiated the prospect of “long-term peaceful coexistence” of Soviet Russia with capital countries. The country was rocked by peasant uprisings. The Kronstadt rebellion broke out - our own people rebelled. Lenin began preparations for the adoption of the NEP policy, which would save the country. Artem was among those who consistently campaigned for the NEP and peaceful coexistence. Radical revolutionaries in the Bolshevik leadership feared a counter-revolution. “The cuckoo has already crowed,” Trotsky announced, predicting the imminent end of Soviet power.
In parallel with the above-mentioned discussions, in the fall of 1921, another so-called discussion about trade unions began. Its real background was the deepest differences in the leadership of the Bolshevik Party in determining the further paths of political development of the country and the party, preventing its bureaucratization. They argued about the role of the working class in these issues, about ways to implement democracy in general. As has already been said, all this is in the context of the failure of the Bolsheviks’ calculation for the revolution in the West, the plan that, having started the revolution first, we, in Lenin’s words, would then “hitch its trailer to the locomotive of the European revolution.”
The apotheosis of the discussion was the party congress in March 1921. The party was breaking up into factions. Trotsky, who defended the idea of revolutionary wars, insisted on the militarization of trade unions and a number of other ideas, the implementation of which would turn the country into a real military camp. The “Platform of Ten,” which included Artem along with Lenin, considered trade unions as a school for the working class to acquire economic and public management skills, as a channel for promoting the most trained and conscious workers to the levers of political and economic leadership.
Artyom, a natural worker and trade union leader, was strongly opposed to Trotsky’s plans. . He believed that the development of the trade union movement in Soviet Russia, the growing consciousness of the proletariat and its beneficial influence on the party could prevent the separation of the party elite from the masses.
In the context of the ongoing civil war, he organized the First and Second All-Russian Congresses of Miners (1920 and 1921), because he believed that the restoration of the trade union movement must begin with the most revolutionary part of the working class, which has always been the miners. In the spring and summer of 1921, he made preparations for the creation of a new international organization, the World Mine Workers' Union.
According to his plan, the cooperation of advanced workers of different countries with trade unions and the working class of Soviet Russia in defending their interests at the national and international level could give much more to the cause of the world revolution than the revolutionary wars advocated by his opponents.
On July 24, 1921, Artem was returning to Moscow with a group of representatives of trade unions in European countries after visiting the Tula coal basin. The high-speed air car in which they were traveling to the capital crashed, several people, including Artyom, died.
Did your grandmother think that Artyom’s death was not accidental?
Dzerzhinsky, who oversaw the investigation, told her that stones had been poured onto the rails at the crash site. He believed that this could be the work of Trotsky's supporters. But this is just a guess...
When assessing the discussions that unfolded among the Bolsheviks in these years, it seems to me important to evaluate which choice gave the country a chance at that time, and which led to the abyss.
At the same time, we must remember that the Trotskyists had their own reasons: Trotsky was confident that without the victory of the revolution in the West, Russia would quickly return to the military-bureaucratic system of government, that “Russian Thermidor” would happen.
So, was Trotsky a consistent supporter of democracy? Did you and Artem discuss these issues?
Along with Lenin, Trotsky was the largest theoretician and practitioner of the Russian revolution. Like all Bolshevik leaders, he believed in the triumph of Marx’s ideas, but any attempt to present his views on Russia’s path to a communist future as a consistent and coherent concept, I think, will lead even a Marxist researcher of the most left-wing orientation to a dead end...
Artyom and Trotsky had a long-standing dislike for each other, but according to their grandmother’s stories, they were finally separated by a “discussion about trade unions.”
On one of the monuments to Artyom, his words are engraved: “The spectacle of the unorganized masses is unbearable for me.” What did he mean by this?
My grandmother and I discussed this phrase. I asked if there was any hint in her of the danger of “disastrous lack of leadership” (as Saltykov-Shchedrin put it) or of a willingness to offer her leadership abilities. Grandmother got angry and explained that they were unorganized because they were irresponsible, and referred to Lenin’s once famous article, where he defined the most important task of the Bolsheviks as raising the level of the most downtrodden peasant “to the level of a consciously thinking social democrat.”
Today they would say - a conscious, socially and politically active citizen. This is what Artyom’s words are about. It is not for nothing that the phrase “trade unions are a school of communism” was born in the depths of the same “platform of 10”. After all, one of the most important foundations of the latter is self-organization and self-government of free and conscious citizens.
English version :: Read in English Grandson of Artem, leader of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic: The DKR's task was to counter Kiev's separatism