Alexander Beloborodov

Alexander Beloborodov
Full Member of the Central Committee of the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party
In office 23 March 1919 – 5 April 1920
Candidate Member of the Central Committee of the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party
In office 5 April 1920 – 16 March 1921
Personal details
Born	Alexander Georgievich Beloborodov (1891-10-26)26 October 1891 Solikamsk, Perm Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	10 February 1938(1938-02-10) (aged 46) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Cause of death	Execution
Resting place	Kommunarka
Nationality	Soviet
Political party	Bolshevik, Communist Party

Alexander Georgievich Beloborodov (Russian: Александр Георгиевич Белобородов; October 26, 1891 – February 10, 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, and party figure. Born in Solikamsk, Perm Governorate, Russian Empire, he joined the RSDLP in 1907. After the February Revolution he became a member of the Ural Regional Party Committee, represented the Ural Bolsheviks at the Party Conference in April 1917, and became Head of the Executive Committee of the Ural Regional Soviet in January 1918. In July 1918, he ordered the execution of the former Tsar Nicholas II and his family, signing the decision by the Ural Soviet which was taken by Filipp Goloshchekin, after a final consultation with party leadership in Moscow, to deliver to Yakov Yurovsky the final orders to murder the Imperial Family.

In March 1919 he was elected a full member of the Central Committee of the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, and subsequently became a Candidate Member of the 9th Party Congress in April 1920. A member of the Left Opposition associated with Leon Trotsky, he signed the Declaration of 46 in October 1923, making himself a lifelong enemy of Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin. Like most Old Bolsheviks, especially those close to Trotsky, Beloborodov fell afoul of the Great Purge and was arrested in 1936. He was executed on 10 February 1938 at Kommunarka firing range. Two decades after his death, he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1958.

Early life

Born 26 October 1891 in the Solikamsk District, Perm Governorate, Russian Empire, Beloborodov's parents were workers employed in the Alexandrovsk Factory in Solikamsk. He left school at 14 to work in a factory as an apprentice electrician.^[1] He joined the Bolsheviks in 1907, and created a local revolutionary organization in Solikamsk while working as an electrician in a mine. He was arrested early in 1908 and as a juvenile, aged 16, was sentenced to confinement in a young offenders' institute, and subsequently exiled to Siberia, where he spent about four years educating himself. After his release, he settled in the Urals and resumed his political activities.

Revolution and Civil War

After the February Revolution he became a member of the Lysva Soviet, and of the Local Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik), and in April, a member of the Ural Region Party Committee. He represented the Ural Bolsheviks at the Party Conference in April 1917, and at the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP. In October 1917 he became a member of the Perm District Party Committee. In January 1918, he was appointed as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Ural Regional Council.

In June 1918, Beloborodov approved an initiative by the regional Cheka led by Gavril Myasnikov to murder Grand Duke Michael, either in advance, or after the fact. Along with Pyotr Voykov, Beloborodov directed the smuggling of letters written in French to the imprisoned Romanov Family at the Ipatiev House, claiming to be a monarchist officer seeking to rescue them, composed at the behest of the Cheka. These fabricated letters, along with the Romanov responses to them, written either on blank spaces or on the envelope, were ultimately used by the Ural Soviet, and likely the Central Executive Committee in Moscow, to justify murdering the Imperial Family amidst the rapid gains made by the White Army in the region. In July 1918, when Yekaterinburg appeared to be at risk of being captured by the White Army, Beloborodov signed the decision of the Soviet ordering the execution of the former Tsar Nicholas II and his wife and children. Following the killings, which took place during the early morning hours of July 17, he sent a coded telegram to Lenin's secretary, Nikolai Gorbunov, which read: "Inform Sverdlov the whole family have shared the same fate as the head. Officially, the family will die at the evacuation." Beloborodov and Yurovsky's deputy Nikulin later oversaw the ransacking of the Romanov quarters, seizing all the family's personal items, the most valuable piled up in Yurovsky's office, whilst things considered inconsequential and of no value were stuffed into the stoves and burned. Beloborodov also ordered the execution of the Tsarina's sister, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, and five other men from the House of Romanov on July 18, only a day after the killing of Nicholas and his family. On 25 July, Yekaterinburg was taken by White Army soldiers of Colonel Voitsekhovsky, and Beloborodov and the Ural Soviet were evacuated first to Perm, then to Vyatka.

At the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party in March 1919, he was elected a Full Member of the Central Committee. On March 25, 1919, he was a candidate considered for the post of Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets following the death of Yakov Sverdlov, but Mikhail Kalinin was elected in his place. From July 1919, he was deputy head of the Political Department of the RVSR. In April 1919 he was sent to suppress an anti-Bolshevik revolt by the Don Cossacks in the Rostov region, which he ruled with great severity for two years.

Membership of the Left Opposition

He was elected a Candidate Member of the 9th Party Congress in April 1920. From 1921 to 1923 he served as the Deputy People's Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Russian SFSR, and from 1923 to 1927 as People's Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Russian SFSR.

In October 1923, Beloborodov was one of the signatories of the Declaration of 46, which called for greater freedom of debate within the Communist Party. This evoked a sarcastic response from Stalin writing in Pravda on 15 December 1923 that "in the ranks of the opposition there are men like Beloborodov, whose 'democracy' is still remembered by the workers of Rostov".^[2] From then on Beloborodov was associated with the Left Opposition, centered around Leon Trotsky. After Trotsky was evicted from the Kremlin in 1927, he lodged in Beloborodov's rooms in the House of the Soviets in Granovsky Street, Moscow.^[3] Beloborodov was expelled from the Communist Party in December 1927 and exiled to northern Siberia, but recanted in 1929, and was readmitted to the party in 1930, and employed in the system of the Committee of State Purchases of the USSR.

Arrest and Execution

Beloborodov was arrested in 1936, early in Stalin's great purge of the upper echelons of the Communist Party, but resisted making the confession required of him, so although his name was mentioned at the trial of Karl Radek and others in January 1937, he was not produced in court. In May 1937, Stalin sent a note to Nikolai Yezhov, head of the NKVD, saying: "One might think that prison for Beloborodov is a podium for reading speeches, statements which refer to the activities of all sorts of people but not to himself. Isn't it time to squeeze this gentleman and make him tell about his dirty deeds? Where is he, in prison or in a hotel?".^[4] It can be assumed that after receiving this instruction, the NKVD subjected him to brutal torture. A fellow prisoner reported hearing him being dragged along a prison corridor shouting, "I am Beloborodov! Pass the word on to the Central Committee that I am being tortured!".^[5] He was shot on 10 February 1938 and posthumously rehabilitated in 1958.

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