Grigory Petrovsky was a talented manager, a supporter of the socialist idea. His personality can hardly be called successful, it is rather tragic. He was able to pass exile, prisons, repressions, but could not stand the test of the totalitarian regime.
At the end of his life, he managed to hear the report of Nikita Khrushchev, to see changes in state policy.
For exactly ninety years, his surname has been part of the "complex name" of the city, which has long been a symbol of the Soviet era.
Early years
Grigory Petrovsky was born on 1878-23-01. It happened in the village of Pechenegy, Kharkov province, in the family of a laundress and a tailor. There were three children in total in the family. His father died early, leaving Gregory at the age of three. When the young man was fourteen years old, the family moved to Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro) in the hope of a better life.
The boy studied at the school at the seminary for a little over two years. He was expelled due to his inability to pay for tuition. The family did not have five rubles to contribute. That's how much a cow cost at that time. At the age of eleven he beganwork in workshops at the railroad. By the age of fifteen, he got a job at the Bryansk Metallurgical Plant.
Revolutionary activity before 1917
While working in Yekaterinoslav, Petrovsky joined the Union of Struggle. Since 1898 he became a member of the RSDLP. Seven years later, he was appointed secretary of the Workers' Council in the city on the Dnieper.
During his revolutionary activities, Grigory Petrovsky was imprisoned three times:
- in 1900;
- in 1903;
- in 1914 he was arrested and convicted, deprived of all rights and sent to a life settlement.
He had to spend some time in exile.
From 1912 to 1914 Petrovsky was in the Duma. During this time, he delivered thirty-two speeches. Among his speeches, the topic of the creation of Ukrainian schools, the admission of the Ukrainian language in administrative institutions, the possibility of Ukrainian cultural and educational organizations to carry out their activities was raised.
The link of the revolutionary leader took place first in the Turukhansk region, and since 1916 - in Yakutia. After the 1917 revolution, he was released.
Activities after the February Revolution
Having been released, Grigory Petrovsky became the commissar of Yakutia, and a couple of months later he was sent by the party to the Donbass.
Positions held:
- member of the RSDLP(b) in Yekaterinoslav;
- Member of the Pre-Parliament;
- People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR;
- one ofcreators of the Cheka;
- participant in the Brest Peace negotiations;
- signed an instruction on the Red Terror;
- chaired the All-Ukrainian CEC;
- on behalf of the Ukrainian SSR signed the Treaty on Education throughout the Union;
- occupied other important positions in the Comintern.
Petrovsky belonged to those representatives of the party apparatus who were guided in everything by Moscow. He rejected the possibility of creating a separate Ukrainian Soviet state. In 1922, he supported the Stalinist project on the creation of the RSFSR with the republics included in it on the rights of autonomy. He did not support the position of Skripnik, Rakovsky, Shumsky, who sought to create a union state with a confederate bias.
In 1932, Petrovsky was sent to the Donetsk region as a person in charge of grain procurements. That is why his name appears in the question of involvement in the genocide of the Ukrainian people. Is he considered one of the perpetrators of the death of a million Ukrainians?
Petrovsky Grigory Ivanovich and the Holodomor
Being responsible for grain procurement in 1932, Petrovsky saw the real situation in the villages of Ukraine. He wrote a letter to Molotov and Stalin, in which he announced the famine and asked for help for the Ukrainian village. He didn't want people to die, but did nothing but write a letter.
Modern historians are not inclined to believe that Grigory Petrovsky (Holodomor 1932-1933) was involved in the genocide of Ukrainians. He, on the contrary, asked to issue a decree on the termination of grain procurement in Ukraine.
Despitesuch behavior, he was not removed from his post. Grigory Petrovsky (Holodomor was the worst time for him, as well as for the entire Ukrainian people) escaped the repressions of the thirties of the twentieth century. On the contrary, he was appointed to various positions in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. This continued until 1938.
Years in honorary exile
Grigory Petrovsky, whose biography is connected with the creation of the USSR, was removed from all posts due to connivance towards "enemies of the people". For a long time he was unemployed. Stalin long wanted to remove Petrovsky, who was too soft for him, but did not dare because of the great authority of the leader of the eastern Ukrainian SSR. He was removed from a leadership position only in 1938 under the pretext of promotion in Moscow. But in the capital, he could not get settled for two years due to Stalin's unspoken order. His family was forced to survive "on bread and water."
Fyodor Samoilov, a fellow deputy, helped him. In 1940 he placed Petrovsky in the Museum of the Revolution. A former ally of Stalin began to work as a supply manager. He managed to get this position because it did not require approval from the Central Committee.
Last years of life
After the death of Stalin, Grigory Petrovsky, whose biography is connected with the Red Terror, returned to social activities again. He spoke with his memoirs in front of audiences, was engaged in journalism. He became the guest of honor atthe famous XX Congress of the CPSU, which debunked the "cult of personality of Stalin."
At the same time, he continued to work at the Museum of the Revolution until his death, which occurred on 1958-09-01. It happened in Moscow, where his ashes were buried in the Kremlin wall. What happened to the children of a politician who had been in honorary exile since 1938?
A family destroyed by the Party
Grigory Ivanovich Petrovsky met his first wife, Dominika Fedorovna, while still working at a factory in Yekaterinoslav. She helped him by printing flyers for T-shirts. They said that people should work eight hours, sleep eight hours, rest eight hours. They lived until the death of his wife, who died at the beginning of World War II.
Children of Petrovsky:
- Leonid - was a Soviet military leader until he was expelled from the party on the eve of the Great Patriotic War. He died in action in 1941.
- Peter was a statesman, one of those who stormed the Winter Palace, he was arrested in 1938, and representatives of the NKVD shot him in 1941.
- Antonina - was married to the son of a famous Ukrainian writer Yuriy Kotsyubinsky, then to party worker Solomon Zager. Both men were repressed in 1937, in the same year Kotsiubinsky's son was shot.
Petrovsky has repeatedly written letters to top management in order to save his children and their families. But his requests were not heard. The sons were rehabilitated only after Stalin's death. By this time they have longrested in the ground and did not need rehabilitation.
City of Dnepropetrovsk
During the years of his activity, Grigory Ivanovich Petrovsky, whose biography is connected with the Ukrainian SSR, received six Orders:
- Lenin (twice);
- Red Banner;
- Labor Red Banner (three times).
His life is closely connected with the city of Yekaterinoslav, where he began to live from a young age. It was here that his political activity began. Being in power, Petrovsky came to him every year. Being in Moscow since 1938, he was able to visit the city on the Dnieper only in 1957.
He was invited to the seventieth anniversary of the plant, which bore the name of Petrovsky. At that time, the “all-Ukrainian headman” was seventy-nine years old. He delivered a speech at the Ilyich Palace, visited the plant, talked to the workers.
Since 1926, the city of his youth was named Dnepropetrovsk. The statesman himself was not happy with such an honor. An interesting fact is that most of the modern residents of the city believed that the name was associated not with Petrovsky, but with Peter the Great.
In addition to the city, other settlements were named after the politician, as well as streets, factories, a railway station, parks.
Attitude of contemporaries
Grigory Petrovsky (revolutionary) has become an objectionable representative of the past. His monument in Dnepropetrovsk (Dnepr) was thrown off by a group of activists on January 29, 2016. The city itself was renamed on May 19, 2016 to Dnipro. The area itself cannot be renamed yet,because its name is enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine.
This is the biography of a man who could not fully fit into the ruling regime, in the construction of which he was directly involved. The politician managed to survive the "purge" of the thirties, but for this he had to pay a very high price - to survive the death of his sons and wife, to fall from the political Olympus, to live in semi-forgetfulness for many years.
