Platten, Friedrich

Friedrich Platten was born on July 8, 1883 in the town of Tablat, canton of St. Gallen ( Switzerland ), in the family of a cabinetmaker ^[1] . By profession - locksmith . At the age of 19, as a result of an accident, he was forced to leave the factory and get a job as an employee of the Zurich magistrate.

In 1904 he joined the Eintracht workers' educational union ( Russian “Consent” ). During the Russian Revolution of 1905-1907, he illegally came to Russia , in 1906 he took part in revolutionary events in Latvia . He was arrested, in March 1908 left Riga , hiding from the gendarmes in a steamboat. In 1911 - 1921 he was a member of the Board of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland , in 1912 he was elected its secretary. He led the general strike of 1912 in Zurich.

During the First World War, he supported the anti-imperialist and antiwar position of the left wing of the Social Democratic movement ; departed from the Second International . He participated in the Zimmerwald ( 1915 ) and Kienthal ( 1916 ) conferences, at which he joined the revolutionary wing - the Zimmerwald Left . In Zimmerwald, he met Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , with whom he became close friends during the latter's stay in Zurich. With the help of Platten, Lenin was able to apply for a residence in the city and gained access to the Central Library of Social Literature.

Using the connections of the Social Democratic Party, in the spring of 1917 he managed to pass a train with Russian political emigrants led by Lenin through German territory, and then, together with prominent Swedish left socialists ( Fredrik Ström , Otto Grimlund , and Tür Nerman, transferred them to Finland . January 1 (14), 1918 during the first attempt on Lenin in Petrograd , he was wounded while covering his body from bullets. Lenin’s sister Maria Ulyanova recalled ^[2] :

January 1 (14), 1918, in the evening, Vladimir Ilyich spoke in the Mikhailovsky Manege before the first detachment of the socialist army, who was leaving for the front.

At a meeting he was accompanied by the Swiss comrade Platten and writing these lines. After leaving the arena after the rally, we got into a closed car and drove to Smolny. But before we had time to drive away a few dozen fathoms, as in the back of the car, like peas, gun bullets rained down. “They shoot,” I said. This was confirmed by Platten, who first grabbed the head of Vladimir Ilyich (they were sitting behind) and took her aside, but Ilyich began to assure us that we were wrong and that he did not think that it was shooting. After the shots, the driver accelerated, then turned around the corner, stopped and, opening the door of the car, asked: “Are everyone alive?” - “Did they really shoot?” Ilyich asked him. “But how,” the chauffeur answered, “I thought - none of you are already here.” Happily got off. If they hit the tire, we would not leave. Yes, and so it was impossible to go very very much - fog, and even then they were at risk. ”

Everything around was really white from the dense fog of St. Petersburg.

Upon reaching Smolny, we began to examine the car. It turned out that the body was perforated in several places with bullets, some of them flew right through, breaking through the front glass. Immediately we found that Comrade Platten’s hand is in the blood. The bullet hit him, obviously, when he averted Vladimir Ilyich’s head, and tore off the skin on his finger.

“Yes, we got off happily,” we said, climbing the stairs to Lenin’s office.

In protest against the expulsion from Switzerland of a Soviet Russia mission led by Jan Berzin, Platten initiated a one-day strike in Zurich on November 9, 1918. He participated in the founding of the Communist International , in March 1919 he was a member of the Presidium of the First Congress of the Comintern. During 1919-1920, acting on various fronts of the Civil War, he was persecuted and arrested by the authorities of Germany, Lithuania , the Ukrainian Directory , Finland and Romania . After returning to Switzerland, he was again convicted by a military court - for "incitement to rebellion" he was sentenced in absentia to six months in prison.

He sought the admission of the SDPS to the Comintern, after which he organized a separate Communist Party of Switzerland and was elected its first secretary (March 5, 1921 ). In the new party, Platten very soon began to have friction with colleagues. Therefore, in 1923, he decided to leave for revolutionary Russia and, together with hundreds of his compatriots, start creating agricultural cooperatives there. Switzerland did not mind. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) newspaper succinctly commented: “After Russia sent many dangerous agitators to Switzerland, it would be fair if at least one disruptive element leaves us.” ^[3]

On July 27, 1920, he turned to Lenin with a letter informing him of the desire of a group of Swiss skilled workers and engineers to relocate to Soviet Russia. Perhaps the reason for this request was the conversation that took place with Lenin back in Moscow. Then Vladimir Ilyich spoke out that it would be nice for foreign comrades to help the Russian peasants in building a new life and mastering advanced agricultural technologies, for which purpose to create exemplary agricultural communes in Soviet Russia.

The idea was supported, but it was possible to realize it only three years later ^[4] . In the summer of 1923, as part of a group of Swiss volunteers (21 people, including 6 children), he arrived with his family (77-year-old father Peter Platten and mother Paulina Platten) in the Soviet Union , where he spent the rest of his life. In the abandoned estate New Lava of the Syzran district, he founded the commune of Swiss emigrant workers, called "Solidarity". According to documents, a commune organized by the Swiss rented the property. Foreigners did not come empty-handed to the Russian outback. Only those communards who were able to pay a share fee of 1200 rubles received the right to move to our country. With these funds, a 20-horsepower Cleveland tractor and other equipment were purchased in Switzerland: plows, seeders, an autogenous apparatus, a feed steamer, dairy processing machines, and sawmill equipment ^[5] .

In the spring of 1924, replenishment from abroad arrived, and the number of emigrants exceeded 70 people, about half of which - 34 people - were communists. In an interview with the Syzran newspaper Krasny Oktyabr, the head of the commune defined the purpose of their arrival in the Russian outback: “We did not come to Russia because we were afraid of the Swiss authorities persecuting us, the communists. Our main goal is to create an exemplary economy in order to show how to conduct it according to all the rules of agronomic culture and scientific experience. ” And for this you need the appropriate equipment and technology. Therefore, the communards did not come empty-handed: in Switzerland they bought a caterpillar tractor with a capacity of 20 horsepower, an autogenous apparatus for repairing equipment, a lathe, mechanisms for cutting and cooking feed, milk processing, and even for observing the weather. In addition to traditional cultures, the Communards were going to grow corn, clover, alfalfa, etc., unusual for these places.

Having set to work, the Communards overhauled six houses and four rebuilt. They launched a mill and a sawmill, equipped carpentry and locksmith workshops. At a livestock farm, where there were 11 milk cows, 19 horses, geese and hens, they set up straw and potato cutters and plowed abandoned lands. A large orchard was set up outside the village, and a dining room and a hut-reading room were opened in the village itself. “On a flat, poor water hill, we fought the drought inherent in the New Lava region. In 1924, the sultry sun destroyed our crops. Thousands of buckets of water had to be manually dragged into the gardens. They worked on average 12 hours. We had no place for lazy people, ”F. Platten wrote in his diary. Over time, Platten moved to Moscow, and drove into the village only on revolutionary holidays. By the spring of 1927, closer to the capital, to the village of Vaskino (Chekhov district, Moscow region), the Communards also relocated, where peasant families from neighboring villages joined them ^[4] . The structures they erected, agricultural implements, and livestock were transferred to the Hubseltrest ^[6] .

In 1931, he took up the post of senior researcher at the International Agrarian Institute in Moscow , and also taught at the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages .

Arrest, imprisonment and death

During the years of " great terror of 1937-1938. Platten was suspended from work in the Comintern and arrested in 1937. On March 12, 1938, the VKVS was sentenced to 8 years in prison for "illegal possession of weapons"; Platten kept pocket brauging donated by N.K. Krupskaya in memory of how he overshadowed Lenin when the bandits attacked the latter’s car in 1919 . During the assassination attempt, Platten was wounded. The gun had the inscription "Our Savior Ilyich."

He served his sentence in the Lipovo camp (now Nyandomsky municipal district of the Arkhangelsk region of the Russian Federation ). 20 letters from the conclusion were preserved, from them it was clear that Platten was seriously ill and starving and could hardly work. In letters addressed to Olga Sventsitskaya, Platten expressed hope for justice and an early release: “I will try to reduce my term of imprisonment with good work.” Platten constantly told his fellow prisoners about his meetings with Lenin, and began to write memoirs about him.

On March 12, 1942, Platten’s imprisonment expired, but he was not released. The last letter from the camp was written on March 25, 1942, not by Platten himself, but with his words. It was reported about Platten’s serious condition, that he was in the hospital “weak and chubby.”

Friedrich Platten died on April 22, 1942 - on the next anniversary of the birth of Lenin. An official certificate issued to relatives said that Platten, "while serving his sentence, died of a cardiovascular disease." He was buried in a common grave and the exact burial place is unknown.

According to other sources, on April 22, Platten died in a camp under mysterious circumstances: according to eyewitnesses , since Platten could not work, the guard brought Platten into the bushes and shot him. This version was also confirmed by Platten's son, speaking in the fall of 1988 in Moscow at an evening dedicated to the 105th anniversary of his father's birth. According to him, in 1958 he received a penitent letter from a former camp guard who wrote that, following an oral order from the camp chief, he personally took Platten to the fence and shot him, because he had ended his camp ^[7] .

Olga Sventsitskaya, who had long-standing friendly relations with Platten, and her daughter Elena Chistyakova-Druzhinina ( Druzhinina, Elena Ioasafovna ) did everything possible to restore the good name of Friedrich Platten. On May 15, 1956, he was posthumously fully rehabilitated ^[8] .

Wives

Platten's first wife was Lina Hait. She helped him free on bail from a Riga prison by selling all of her dowry, including a ring and earrings. Friedrich Platten and Lina Hait divorced: the wife could not stand the intense revolutionary life of her husband ^[9] .

Platten's second wife, Olga, was the daughter of the famous Russian Esperantist Nikolai Korzhlinsky . Having learned from newspapers that her husband had been sentenced by a Romanian court to death by hanging (the information turned out to be false), Olga Nikolaevna committed suicide on December 31, 1918, by jumping out of a window ^[10] .

The third wife of Platten was Berta Zimmerman (Berta Georgievna Platten-Zimmerman during her stay in the USSR). Born in 1902 in Zurich . She worked as a foreign secretary of the communications service of the Executive Committee of the Communist International . In 1937, the NKVD was arrested according to Stalin's lists and convicted as an agent of two foreign intelligence services: the English and German ^[11] . On December 2, 1937, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR was sentenced to death for participation in a Trotskyist organization. On June 2, 1956, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR rehabilitated ^[12] .

In the city of Nyandoma there is Fritz Platten Street ^[13] . And also on one of the buildings there is a memorial plaque ^[14] .

A memorial plaque was erected on the building of Moscow State Linguistic University on 38 Ostozhenka Street, “A prominent figure in the international labor movement, Swiss communist Fritz Platten, worked here from 1931 to 1938”.

• Platten F. Lenin from emigration to Russia. March 1917. - M.: Moscow Worker, 1925.
• * Platten F. Lenin from emigration to Russia. March 1917 Compilation comp. A.E. Ivanov. In the appendix: documents, memoirs, letters of F. Platten from the camp. - M.: Moscow Worker, 1990.220 p.
• Ivanov A. B. Fritz Platten. - M., Politizdat, 1963 .-- 80 p.
• Dunaevsky A. M. Platten known and unknown: Documentary novel. - M .: Military Publishing House, 1974.- 248 p.
• Sventsitskaya O. V. Fritz Platten - a fiery revolutionary. - M.: Thought, 1974. - 184 p.
• Druzhinina E. I. Memories of Fritz Platten (On the 90th Birthday) -f. History of the USSR, No. 3, 1973, pp. 143-152.

• Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 vol.] / Ch. ed. A.M. Prokhorov . - 3rd ed. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978.
• Andreev Sergey . Savior of Lenin starved to death // Change
• “Exhibition of one exhibit” presents letters from the camp of Friedrich (Fritz) Platten to Olga Sventsitskaya. June 1940 - March 1942
• Taylor Stanislav . April meeting // North latitude. - 2007. - May 25.
• Goldstein P. Yu. Fulcrum: 17 years in the camps of life and death
• Minutes No. 9 of the meeting of the Commission of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee on the additional study of materials related to the repressions that took place during the period 30-40s and early 50s, with appendices
• Fritz Platten and others (Fr.)
• Newspaper "Simbirsky Courier" from 11/03/2011
• The newspaper Ulyanovskaya Pravda No. 123 (23.100) dated November 01, 2011