The activities of the political figure, nicknamed by his contemporaries "Iron Felix", causes a mixed reaction. Some call him a hero, some - an executioner who knows no pity. Many of Dzerzhinsky's statements about politics, economics, and the state apparatus are of interest even today.
Childhood and youth
Felix Edmundovich was born in 1877 on the territory of today's Belarus, in the Vilna province. The parents of the future revolutionary come from an intelligent environment: his mother, Polish by nationality, is the daughter of a professor; father, a Jew - a gymnasium teacher. In 1822, Felix's father dies, and his mother is left alone with eight children. Despite the difficult financial situation, they try to give children a good education. A boy who does not know Russian at all is sent to the Imperial Gymnasium. The study did not work out. Dzerzhinsky, who dreams of becoming a priest (Catholic priest), has only onepositive assessment, in the subject "The Law of God".
In 1835, as a student of the gymnasium, the young man becomes a member of the social democratic movement.
I hated we alth because I loved people, because I see and feel with all the strings of my soul that today people worship the golden calf, which turned human souls into beasts and expelled love from people's hearts…
For spreading revolutionary ideas in 1897 he was arrested. After a year of imprisonment, in 1898, Dzerzhinsky was sent into exile in the Vyatka province. There he continues to agitate among the factory workers. The violent revolutionary is transferred to a remote area, to the village of Kaygorodskoye. Deprived of the opportunity to campaign, Dzerzhinsky escapes to Lithuania, from where he moves to Poland.
Revolutionary activity
Dzerzhinsky continues to serve the “cause of the revolution” by joining the Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania (SDPPiL) in 1900. Acquaintance with Lenin's publication Iskra strengthens his convictions. In 1903, after his election as secretary of the foreign committee of the SDPPiL, Dzerzhinsky arranges the transfer of prohibited literature and the publication of the Krasnoe Znamya newspaper. As a member of the Main Board of the Party (elected in 1903), he organizes sabotage and uprisings of workers in Poland. After the events in Petrograd, in 1905, he led the May Day demonstration.
The result of a personal meeting between Dzerzhinsky and Lenin in Stockholm in 1906 was the entry of Dzerzhinsky into the RSDLP (RussianSocial Democratic Party).
In 1909, a revolutionary continuing party work was arrested, deprived of class rights and sent to a life-long settlement in Siberia. From the moment he joined the Bolshevik Party and until the February Revolution of 1917, he went to prison eleven times, then to exile or hard labor. Each time he escapes, Dzerzhinsky returns to party activities.
Dzerzhinsky's remarks show his fierce stance as a professional revolutionary:
Let's rest, comrades, in prison.
Remember that there is a holy spark in the soul of people like me… that gives happiness even at the stake.
Dzerzhinsky becomes a member of the Moscow Committee of the Bolshevik organization after the February Revolution of 1917. Here he is engaged in propaganda of an armed uprising. Lenin assesses the personal qualities of Dzerzhinsky and includes him in the military revolutionary center. F. E. Dzerzhinsky - one of the organizers of the October armed coup.
To live - doesn't it mean to have unshakable faith in victory?
Chief Chekist
The Bolsheviks, who won as a result of an armed coup, came to power in 1917. It immediately became necessary to create an organization that counteracts the opponents of the revolution. F. E. Dzerzhinsky was appointed chairman of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (VChK), established in December 1917. Punitive organizationreceived broad powers, including the right to independently impose death sentences. After moving from Petrograd in 1919, the Chekists occupied the building on the Lubyanka. There is also a prison here, and firing squads work in the basements.
Dzerzhinsky's statements about the Chekists became his slogan in the fight against counter-revolution:
He who becomes cruel and whose heart remains insensitive towards the prisoners must leave here. Here, as in no other place, you need to be kind and noble.
Serve in the organs can be either saints or scoundrels.
Only a person with a cool head, a warm heart and clean hands can be a Chekist.
The abbreviation "VChK" is one of the most famous names of the 20th century. The chairman of the department did not tolerate dissent. It is Dzerzhinsky who is considered the initiator of the persecution of the intelligentsia and the clergy.
Philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about him:
He was a fanatic. In his eyes, he gave the impression of a man possessed. There was something creepy about him… In the past, he wanted to become a Catholic monk and he transferred his fanatical faith to communism.
An idealist who hated the brutality of the tsarist secret police, fabricated cases, torture, prisons, hard labor, became an executioner.
I strive with all my heart to ensure that there is no injustice, crime, drunkenness, debauchery, excesses, excessive luxury, brothels in which people sell their body or soul, or both together; so that there is no oppression, fratricidal wars, national enmity…
Created by Dzerzhinsky and his associates, the Cheka eventually turned into one of the most effective intelligence services in the world.
Administrative activities
In addition to his activities as chairman of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky takes an active part in the fight against devastation. Dzerzhinsky's statements are a demonstration of his view on the restoration of a destroyed state.
We must go and explain to every worker and peasant that we [Russia] need funds in order to move our factories in order to have enough raw materials of our own so that we will not be so dependent on foreign countries as we can get in if we build the development of our economy solely through imports from abroad…
I'm not preaching here that we can isolate ourselves from abroad. This is absurd, and this is not necessary at all. But in order not to fall into bondage from foreign capitalists who follow our every step, and when it is wrong, they will immediately try to use it, for this we must work hard.
The result of Dzerzhinsky's activities as Commissar of Railways in the 20s was the restoration of more than 10 thousand km of the railway, more than 200 thousand steam locomotives and more than 2000 bridges. Having personally traveled to Siberia, in 1919 he was able to ensure the supply of about 40 million tons of grain to the starving regions. By organizing the supply of medicines, he contributed to the fight against typhus.
Establishment of orphanages
The activity of the chairman of the Cheka as chairman of the Commission for Combating Homelessness, whose tasks included organizing labor communes and orphanages, deserves a separate discussion. Buildings confiscated from the "former" have become a haven for a whole generation of homeless children.
Your task is enormous: to nurture and shape the souls of your children. Be vigilant! For the fault or merit of children to a large extent falls on the head and conscience of the parents.
Love for a child, like any great love, becomes creativity and can give a child lasting, true happiness when it enhances the scope of the life of the lover, makes him a full-fledged person, and does not turn the beloved creature into an idol.
Business activities
In 1922, without leaving the post of chairman of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky heads the Main Political Directorate of the NKVD and takes part in the formation of the new economic policy of the state (NEP). In 1924, Dzerzhinsky became the head of the Higher National Economy of the USSR. He is the initiator of the creation of joint-stock companies and enterprises with the involvement of foreign capital. Dzerzhinsky is a supporter of the development of private capital in Soviet Russia, calls for the creation of favorable conditions for this.
Dzerzhinsky's statements about the economy:
Currency is that sensitive thermometer that takes into account what irregularities exist.
If we are now wooden, bastard Russia, then we must become metal Russia.
When we [Russia] build our factories,we will begin to develop our we alth, foreign investors will come to us themselves. But when we kneel before them, they will only despise us and will not give us a penny.
Okay, we [Russia] are a peasant state, but our yields are lower than in Holland, Germany and France. Why? Because, firstly, we do not have nitrogen fertilizers. This means that it is necessary to create a chemical industry for agriculture. Secondly, we plow on a horse, but all over the world this has long been forgotten. We need tractors - where can we get them? We need to build tractor and combine plants, which means we need a powerful metallurgical base, which we have is weak. This means that it is necessary to build metallurgical plants, for the operation of which it is necessary to develop deposits of iron ore, non-ferrous metals, and so on.
Exports should prevail over imports, and the balance for specific types of products and goods should be determined strictly on a planned basis. With us [in Russia], each trust and syndicate is on its own. In almost all questions: on wages, on restoration work, on concentration, on mastering the market. And everyone strove to use all their "happiness" for themselves, and shift "unhappiness" to the state, demanding subsidies, subsidies, loans, high prices.
Fighting bureaucracy
The Chairman of the Cheka advocated the fight against bureaucracy and the reform of the country's administrative system.
Dzerzhinsky on Russia:
I came to the irrefutable conclusion that the main work is not in Moscow, but in the field, that 2/3 of the responsible comrades and specialists from allParty (including the Central Committee), Soviet and trade union institutions must be transferred from Moscow to the localities. And do not be afraid that the central institutions will fall apart. All forces must be directed to the factories, mills and the countryside in order to really raise the productivity of labor, and not the work of pens and offices. Otherwise, we won't get out. The best plans and instructions do not even reach here and hang in the air.
In order for the state [Russia] not to go bankrupt, it is necessary to solve the problem of state apparatuses. Uncontrollable inflation of states, monstrous bureaucratization of every business - mountains of papers and hundreds of thousands of hacks; captures of large buildings and premises; car epidemic; millions of excesses. This is legal and the devouring of state property by this locust. In addition to this, unheard of, shameless bribery, theft, negligence, blatant mismanagement, which characterizes our so-called "self-supporting", crimes pumping state property into private pockets.
If you look at our entire apparatus of power in Russia, at our entire system of government, if you look at our unheard-of bureaucracy, our unheard-of fuss with all sorts of approvals, then I am horrified by all this.
To look through the eyes of one's staff is the death of a leader.
Iron Felix ruthlessly fought the opposition, fearing that a person capable of destroying all the transformations and reforms of the revolution would come to the post of leader of the country.
The ascetically modest Felix Dzerzhinsky is the “knight of the revolution”, an eternal worker who set the political and stateactivities come first in one's own in one's life.
Selected quotes by Dzerzhinsky can serve as a characteristic of the head of the state security department. He died on July 20, 1926 during a report on the state of the economy of the USSR. The official cause of death was a heart attack, but there is still talk of poisoning.
If I had to live again, I would start the way I started.
F. E. Dzerzhinsky was buried at the Kremlin wall. Soviet propaganda idealized the image of the head of the Cheka, but in the late 80s, articles appeared that opened some pages of his life and debunked the myth. In August 1991, symbolically, as a sign of the end of the era of socialism, the monument to Dzerzhinsky on Lubyanka Square was demolished.
