Dora Abramovna Lazurkina was a Russian revolutionary who was active in the October Revolution. Between 1918 and 1922 she acted as the director of the preschool division of the People's Commissariat for Education, underneath Anatoly Lunacharsky. From 1922 to 1932 she was active in the Leningrad Regional Committee under the leadership of Sergei Kirov, and from 1932 to 1934 she was deputy secretary of the Leningrad Party Control Commission.[1]
She was arrested and sentenced to five years of exile in 1937; her sentence was later changed to imprisonment in the Gulag and extended indefinitely. She was released in 1955 and subsequently rehabilitated.
Early life
Lazurkina was born on May 6 (April 24 according to the old style), 1884 in Novozybkov, Chernihiv Governorate, to a Jewish family. Her father was a forester.
At the age of nine, she entered the Novozybkov Women's Gymnasium, from which she graduated with a gold medal. At the age of 15, she joined the local social-democratic circle, where she performed technical tasks.
In 1902 she joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ("RSDLP"), adopting a party pseudonym of Sonya. In May of the same year, she was arrested for organising a May Day demonstration, spent eight months in prison, was exiled under police supervision to Novozybkov, and then left for Odessa, where she changed her surname and went underground, becoming a professional revolutionary.
Working as a propagandist in Odessa, in 1903 she was arrested at one of the meetings of the local party committee and sent to prison, from which she was released on bail seven months later on the condition that she not return to Saint Petersburg for a period of five years. There, in Odessa, she met the professional revolutionary Mikhail Semyonovich Lazurkin (party pseudonym Boris), whom she married in 1906.
Soon, on the instructions of the party committee, she went to work in Nikolaev, then was sent to Yekaterinoslav. When she was identified as a member of the party committee by a police agent in 1904 she was forced to hide, wearing a peasant dress and using someone else's passport, then leaving for Geneva. It was there, at the age of 19, she first met Lenin, living for eight months in an apartment with the Ulyanovs and imbued with Bolshevism under his influence.
Return to Russia
The day after receiving news of Bloody Sunday, on January 10, 1905, she went to St. Petersburg, and then to Odessa, on behalf of Lenin, where she became a liaison with the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. She worked as a propagandist and organizer, but was arrested by the police and exiled to the Arkhangelsk Governorate.
She soon escaped from her exile, then arrived in Moscow, where she took part in a party conference, at which she was arrested and sent to Butyrka prison. After being released from prison on October 17, 1905, she relocated to St. Petersburg's Vyborgsky district, where she was a member of the committee, while working as an organizer and propagandist.
On December 12, 1905, she spoke at the Nobel factory to the workers of the Vyborg side, calling for a strike and support for Moscow. After the rally, together with members of the committee, she went out to Samsonievskaya Street, where there was a shootout with a policeman, who was killed by someone from the crowd. She was charged with murder and sentenced to one year in prison. In 1906 she was exiled to the Vyatka Governorate, from which she fled to St. Petersburg.
In 1906-1907 she worked in Saint Petersburg in the party organizations of the Narva and Vasileostrovsky districts. In 1907, she was again arrested and sent to prison, from which she was released in 1908. In 1910, a son, Viktor, was born in the Lazurkins' family, and in 1912, a daughter, Yulia. After graduating from the Froebel Pedagogical Institute, Dora Lazurkina began to participate in pedagogical societies and teach. During the years before 1917, she worked in a newspaper, organized parties, and participated in raising money for the press.
In December 1918, she was removed from party work and moved to the People's Commissariat for Education ("Narkompros" or Наркомпрос) as head of the preschool department, organizing preschool education and becoming a member of the state commission for public education.
In 1922, at her own request, she was transferred to Petrograd, where in 1922-1928 she was the head of the regional party school and a member of the Leningrad regional party control commission. In 1928, on the recommendation of the Leningrad Regional Committee, the Central Committee of the Party appointed Lazurkina to the post of director of the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute.
Without an academic title, in a short time she set up work on the preparation of qualified teaching staff, the organization of a number of new faculties, the revision of curricula and programs, and the involvement of public figures and students in the council of the institute, and was active in publicizing the institute's work through its newspaper. In 1932-1934 she worked as Deputy Secretary of the Party Collegium of the Regional Control Commission.
In January 1934 she was a delegate to the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)--which later acquired the nickname "the Executed Congress". After Kirov's assassination she was expelled from the party, but then reinstated. In 1934-1937, she headed the department of schools of the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
Exile and imprisonment
In May 1937, one of Stalin's closest allies, Andrei Zhdanov, called leaders of the Leningrad party together to tell them that the long-time second secretary of the provincial party, Mikhail Chudov, and the former Mayor of Leningrad, Ivan Kodatsky, had been arrested. When Lazurkina went up to him afterwards to vouch for Kodatsky, Zhdanov warned her that such talk "will end badly for you".
On August 8, 1937, she was arrested. Her husband was also expelled from the party, then arrested, and finally executed during interrogation by the NKVD, who tried to make his death appear to be a suicide.
She was initially sentenced to five years of exile for "participation in a counter-revolutionary organization". In 1939 she was sentenced to eight years in labor camps, then in 1949 to exile in a settlement.
Release and rehabilitation
She was finally released and rehabilitated in 1955; she was later awarded the Order of Lenin in 1956, and again in 1967 on the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. While she was granted a pension and elected as a delegate to party congresses, she was traumatized by her years of imprisonment and exile: until the end of her life she was tormented by nightmares, in which she dreamed of tortures, beatings, and surveillance.
At the 22nd Party Congress in 1961, she gave a speech, which was received with thunderous applause, in which she detailed a dream she had supposedly had in which Lenin told her he did not want Joseph Stalin's body lying next to his:
I always carry Ilyich in my heart and always, comrades, in the most difficult moments, I survived only because I had Ilyich in my heart and I consulted with him what to do. Yesterday I consulted with Ilyich, as if he stood before me as if alive and said: it is unpleasant for me to be next to Stalin, who brought so much trouble to the party.
In 1971, she dictated her memoirs. She had a heightened sense of justice, and expressed her disagreement with conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to Leonid Brezhnev. She proposed limiting privileges for party workers, as a result of which she was no longer invited to party events; the 70th anniversary of her joining the party passed without any form of commemoration.
She died on January 24, 1974, in Leningrad at the age of 89, exactly 50 years after the death of Lenin, whom she revered. She was buried at the Theological Cemetery at the cenotaph of her husband.
Personal life
Her husband, Mikhail Semenovich Lazurkin (1883-1937), was director of the Polytechnic Institute (1930-1933) and director of Leningrad State University (1933-1937) until his arrest and murder. Her daughter Yulia Mikhailovna Lazurkina (1912–1977) was associate professor of the department of pedagogy of the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. Her son Viktor Mikhailovich Lazurkin (1910-1992) was an Arctic geologist.
Related Research Articles
Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin was a Soviet politician and Russian Old Bolshevik revolutionary. He served as head of state of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and later of the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1946. From 1926, he was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Andrei Sergeyevich Bubnov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary leader, one of Bolshevik leaders in Ukraine, Soviet politician and military leader and member of the Left Opposition.
Ivar Tenisovich Smilga was a Latvian Bolshevik leader, Soviet politician and economist. He was a member of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union.
Avel Safronovich Yenukidze was a prominent Georgian "Old Bolshevik" and, at one point, a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) in Moscow. In 1932, along with Mikhail Kalinin and Vyacheslav Molotov, Yenukidze co-signed the infamous "Law of Spikelets". In 1918 to 1935 Yenukidze served as the Secretary of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union.
Mykola Oleksiiovych Skrypnyk, was a Ukrainian Bolshevik revolutionary and Communist leader who was a proponent of the Ukrainian Republic's independence, and later led the cultural Ukrainization effort in Soviet Ukraine. When the policy was reversed and he was removed from his position, he committed suicide rather than be forced to recant his policies in a show trial. He also was the Head of the Ukrainian People's Commissariat, equivalent to the modern-day position of Prime Minister of Ukraine.
Elena Dmitriyevna Stasova was a Russian Soviet revolutionary, Old Bolshevik and an early leader of the organisation that would go on to become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Gleb Ivanovich Bokii was a Soviet Communist political activist, revolutionary, and paranormal investigator in the Russian Empire. Following the October Revolution of 1917, Bokii became a leading member of the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, and later of the OGPU and NKVD.
Lev Borisovich Kamenev was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. An Old Bolshevik, Kamenev was a leading figure in the early Soviet government, serving as the first head of state of the Russian SFSR as chairman of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and as a deputy premier of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1926, among other roles.
Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician and statesman, most prominent as premier of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and 1924 to 1930 respectively. He was one of the accused in Joseph Stalin's show trials during the Great Purge.
Vasily Onisimovich Afanasiev was a revolutionary and a propagandist of Marxism as well as a prominent activist and supporter of the Russian and international Socialist movement. He was among the active members of the RSDLP and was a Menshevik. In 1925, Anisimoff became the deputy head of the economic department of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy of the RSFSR, managing the "Exportles" trust.
Yuri Petrovich Gaven, born Jānis Daumanis, was a Latvian revolutionary and Soviet politician and Chekist. He was a key figure in the defeat of the Crimean People's Republic and the establishment of the short-lived Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic and an active participant in the Red Terror in Crimea. Executed during the Stalinist purges in 1936, he was rehabilitated in 1958.
Isaak Khristoforovich Lalayants was a Russian revolutionary, Bolshevik and comrade-in-arms of Vladimir Lenin.
Vladimir Ivanovich Nevsky was a Russian revolutionary, Bolshevik functionary, Soviet statesman, professor and historian.
Georgy Ivanovich Safarov was a Bolshevik revolutionary and politician who was a participant in the Russian Revolution, the Russian Civil War, and in the executions of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg and Alapayevsk.
Alexander Edmund (Vasil’evich) Shotman was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and statesman of Finnish origin.
Ivan Petrovich Bakayev was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician and statesman. A member of the Left Opposition, he was a defendant at the first Moscow show trials.
Pyotr Antonovich Zalutsky was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Communist Party organiser, who was executed for his involvement in the United Opposition.
Grigori Ermeevich Yevdokimov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician.
Nikolai Pavlovich Komarov was a Russian Soviet politician, statesman and Communist Party official.
Dmitry Ilyich Leshchenko was a Russian revolutionary, Old Bolshevik, professor and one of the founders and first organizers of Soviet Cinema who served as first head of the All-Russian Photo and Cinematographic Department of the People's Commissariat for Education.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
