Eihe, Robert Indrikovich

Latvian. Born in the family of a farm laborer in the Avotyni estate of the Dobele county of Courland province (now in Latvia). In 1904 he graduated from the Dobele two-year elementary school. In 1906 he moved to Mitau , where he worked as an apprentice in Weinberg's locksmith and forge workshop. In 1905 he joined the Social Democracy of the Latvian Territory (SDLK). In August 1907 he was arrested, having spent two months in prison, was released for lack of evidence. In the same year he was elected to the district committee of the Mitavian organization, and in 1908 he was elected a member of the Mitau Committee of the Social Democracy of the Latvian Territory (SDLC). In February, with 18 comrades, he was arrested in an illegal meeting, after six months in prison, released under police supervision.

At the end of 1908 he emigrated to the UK . He was a stoker on a steamboat on long voyages, worked in Scotland at a coal mine, at a zinc smelter in West Hartlepool.

In 1911 , having learned that his old cases had been liquidated or transferred to the court of justice and that if he was returned to Russia he was no longer in danger of a long prison term, he returned to Riga. He was a member of the IV district committee in Riga. He was a member of the Hammer trade union, the Education society, and the Product cooperative society. Since 1914, a member of the Central Committee of the SDLK.

In 1915 he was exiled to the Cherevyansky volost of the Kansky district of the Yenisei province . He fled to Irkutsk , then, under a false name, lived in Achinsky district, working at an oil factory in the village of Krutoyarka.

Revolution and Civil War

After the February Revolution, the Central Committee of Latvia was called to Riga. In 1917, he was elected a member of the Presidium of the Riga Council, during the German occupation he conducted underground work. In January 1918 he was arrested by the Germans, but already in July fled to Moscow .

In 1919 - Commissar of Food of Soviet Latvia . Since 1919, Deputy Chelyabinsk Provincial Commissar, Deputy Chairman of the Chelyabinsk Provincial Executive Committee, Chairman of the Provincial Committee of the RCP (B.).

In 1921 he was a delegate to the Third Congress of the Comintern . Until 1924 - at a responsible job in the People's Commissariat of Food of the RSFSR, chairman of the Siberian Food Committee.

In Siberia

Since 1924 - Deputy Chairman of the Sibrevkom , December 4, 1925 - Chairman of the Siberian Regional Executive Committee. Since 1925, a candidate member of the Central Committee , since July 1930 a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and since February 1935, a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee . Since 1929 - 1st Secretary of the Siberian Regional Committee of the CPSU (b), since 1930 - West Siberian Regional Committee of the CPSU (b).

Organizer of collectivization and dispossession. He was a member of the commission "to work out measures against the kulaks", formed by the Politburo on January 15, 1930, headed by V. M. Molotov. On January 30, 1930, the Politburo, having finalized the draft Molotov commission, adopted a resolution "On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of continuous collectivization."

The historian Yu. N. Zhukov writes: In 1930, the tough, voluntarist style of work of Eikhe, who too clearly demonstrated his utter incompetence, provoked a sharp and open protest from a large group of responsible workers in Siberia. However, it was they, and not Robert Indrikovich, who were removed from their posts ^[2] .

On February 10, 1933, he opposed the excessive immigration of special settlers to Western Siberia, informing Stalin:

This proposal is completely unrealistic, explainable only by the fact that the comrades who make up the outline of the plan are not familiar with the conditions of the north. No matter what material resources the center has allocated to help the region, we cannot bring in, resettle, or create minimum conditions for wintering in the summer of 1933.

Eiche reported that even after much preparation, Western Siberia will be able to accept instead of one million 250-270 thousand people ^[3] .

In 1931, the bureau of the West Siberian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) adopted the Decree “On the Elimination of the Kulaks as a Class”: from May 10 to June 10, 39,788 families were “dispossessed” of orders dropped down from above ^[4] .

In a telegram to Stalin dated March 7, 1933, Eihe proposed "to accept, arrange in the Narymsky and Tarsky north 500 thousand special settlers."

In 1934, during grain procurements , Eihe claimed from the Politburo the right to sanction capital punishment on his territory for two months - from September 19 to November 15 ^[5] .

At the XVII Congress of the CPSU (B.), Held on January 26 - February 10, 1934, Eiche made the second on January 27 during the discussion of Stalin's Report. He was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

On February 1, 1935, at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.), He was elected a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.).

Figurine of the NKVD USSR troika

At the December 1936 plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, at which Nikolai Yezhov reported on “anti-Soviet Trotskyist and right-wing organizations,” Eihe sharply opposed his former party comrades:

The facts revealed by the investigation revealed the bestial face of the Trotskyists in front of the whole world ... So, Comrade Stalin, they sent several separate echelons of Trotskyists into exile - I heard nothing more vile than what the Trotskyists sent to Kolyma said. They shouted to the Red Army: "The Japanese and the Nazis will slaughter you, and we will help them." Why the hell, comrades, send such people into exile? They need to be shot. Comrade Stalin, we are doing too softly.

- ^[6]

He led the " purge " of the party and economic apparatus, which caused an unprecedented wave of arrests. He led the deployment of mass repression in Siberia. He was one of the very first of the triples of the Great Terror period (approved by the Politburo on June 28, 1937 ^[7] ), which passed thousands of death sentences out of court.

In 1937, the three NKVD of Western Siberia, which included Eikhe and Zakovsky , convicted 16,553 people, including 4,762 - to be shot, 8,576 - to be sent to camps, 1,556 - to exile, 1,759 - to expulsion ^{[8 ]} .

Eikhe sought to personally direct the work of the Siberian security officers, intervened in the affairs of the NKVD. In some cases, he came to the NKVD department and was present at interrogations.

In 1937, a troika under the leadership of Eiche punished 34,872 people in fabricated cases of the White Guard-Monarchist Organization of the ROVS , the Siberian Branch of the Labor Peasant Party , the Church and Monarchist Rebel Organization, and others ^[9] .

People's Commissar of Agriculture of the USSR

At the end of October 1937 he was appointed People's Commissar of Agriculture of the USSR ^[10] . Until October 29, 1937, this post was occupied by M. A. Chernov , convicted in the case of the right-Trotskyist bloc and executed on March 15, 1938.

According to the characteristic of V. I. Chernoivanov , “he (Eihe) accepted the rules of behavior dictated by the situation of that time. Eihe began to explain all the shortcomings in agriculture by sabotage ” ^[11] .

He was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. December 12, 1937 was elected to the Council of the Union of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st convocation from the Novosibirsk region.

Accusation and execution

On April 29, 1938, Eihe was arrested and charged with creating a “Latvian fascist organization”. ^[12] On February 2, 1940, he was sentenced to death. Shot the same day. The ashes were buried at the Kommunarka firing range.

In January 1954, the former head of the 1st special department of the NKVD, L. F. Bashtakov, showed the following:

In front of my eyes, according to the instructions of Beria , Rhodes and Esaul , Eihe was severely beaten with rubber sticks, who fell from the beatings, but he was beaten while lying down, then he was lifted, and Beria asked him one question: “Do you admit that you are a spy?” Eihe answered him: "No, I do not recognize." Then he was again beaten by Rhodes and Esaulov, and this nightmarish execution on a man sentenced to death continued only with me about five times. Eihe's eye was knocked out and leaked during beating. After the beating, when Beria was convinced that he could not get any recognition of espionage from Eikhe, he ordered him to be taken to execution.

- ^[13]

The case of Eikhe was mentioned by the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU N. S. Khrushchev in his report “ On the cult of personality and its consequences ” on February 25, 1956 as an example of falsification . At the same time, the investigative case of Eikhe, as well as the vast majority of cases of senior leaders repressed in 1937-1938, has been classified to the present (2007) ^[14] .

It was rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on March 14, 1956 and reinstated in the party on March 22, 1956 by the CPC under the Central Committee of the CPSU ^[15] .

• Order of Lenin ( March 15, 1935 ).

He was married to Eugenia Evseevna Eikhe-Rubtsova (1898 - August 26, 1938), who, after moving to Moscow, studied at the Moscow Medical Institute (at the time of arrest - in the 2nd year) ^[16] . She was also repressed with her husband. There were no children in the family.

• In 1932, parents named the famous Soviet poet R.I. Rozhdestvensky in honor of Eikhe.
• In October 1933, the first sound cinema named after the secretary of the regional committee, Robert Eikhe , was inaugurated in Prokopyevsk in the West Siberian Territory. After his arrest as an “ enemy of the people, ” the cinema was renamed in honor of Nikolai Ostrovsky ^[17] .
• From 1933 to 1938 in Novosibirsk, the district and the railway station were named after Eikhe and from 1936 to 1938. - the area in front of the regional executive committee. After the Eihe was repressed, the area was renamed Pervomaisky , the station was called Inskaya ^[18] , the area for a long time was simply called “the area of ​​the regional executive committee”, and in 1957 it was named after Y. M. Sverdlov ^[19] .
• In honor of Eikhe, a district was named in Kemerovo of the West Siberian Territory. Nowadays - the Rudnichny district.
• In 1969, the trawler Robert Eiche, built by order of the USSR at the Gdansk Shipyard ^[20], was named after him. The trawler (tail number RP-0147), the receiving and processing floating base , had a port of registry in Riga . In 1991, the trawler was also renamed: it became known as “PLAVNIEKI”, and in 1995 it was decommissioned ^[21] .
• From 1965 to 1991, Robert Eiche was named after Rushon Street in Riga .
• One of the streets in the Pervomaisky district of Novosibirsk is named after Eikhe.
• In Alma-Ata (Republic of Kazakhstan), one of the streets is named after Eihe.

• Eihe's autobiography, written by him at the entry into the society of the old Bolsheviks. // Guardsmen of October. The role of the indigenous peoples of the Baltic countries in the establishment and strengthening of the Bolshevik system. - M .: Indrik , 2009. - ISBN 978-5-91674-014-1
• Papkov S.A. Ordinary Terror. The policy of Stalinism in Siberia. - M .: ROSSPEN , 2012 .-- 440 p.: Ill. - (History of Stalinism) - ISBN 978-5-8243-1674-2
• Serebrennikov S. V. Party and state activity of R. I. Eikhe, 1905-1940: dis. ... cand. East. sciences. - SPb., 1994 .-- 286 p.
• Teplyakov A.G. Oprichniki Stalin. - M .: Eksmo , 2009 .-- 432 p. - ISBN 978-5-699-33879-5
• Kupcis Z. R. Eihe. 1890-1940. // Cinitaji par Oktobri. - Riga, 1967.