Klautzen, Arnold Petrovich

The early years

Arnold Petrovich Klautsen was born in the family of the prosecutor of the Ulyotovsky district of the Chita region Pyotr Petrovich Klautsen (1897-1983) and his wife Sofya Dmitrievna (nee Smirnova, 1905-1981). The father came from Latgale , the Ruben parish of Ilukst county ^[3] .

In 1940, the family moved to the Vladimir region, where Peter Petrovich worked in economic positions. He was not subject to mobilization in the army by age (44 years at the beginning of the war) and state of health (disability due to thrombophlebitis ). During the war, he was sent by the chairman of the collective farm to the village of Krasnovo near Murom .

After the war he was sent to Latvia, where he was assigned the position of party organizer of a machine and tractor station in the village of Vecumnieki in the Bauska district ^[3] .

Arnold and his elder brother Edward went there to a Latvian school, although they did not speak their father’s native language.

In 1947, Petr Petrovich was transferred to work in Akniste, where the children again went to a Latvian school. After a year of study, the mother, worried about the poor quality of knowledge of the boys, insisted on their transfer to the seven-year-old with the Russian language of instruction, which they completed in 1953.

Arnold entered the Riga Construction College with a specialization in “Production of steel structures” and worked part-time at the Riga Motor Plant “ Sarkana Zweigzne ”. Upon its completion in 1957, he received distribution to the Urals, in Sverdlovsk, by the master of the construction site of the Stalmontazh-5 trust at the Uralmash plant ^[3] .

In the autumn of that year, Arnold was drafted into the Soviet Army ^[2] , where he joined the Komsomol work: he organized sports competitions, issue wall newspapers , and the work of Lenin's room. His service took place in the Urals, in the cities of Rezh and Berezniki.

Having completed his service ahead of schedule in July 1960, in order to be able to enter the institute, Klaucen successfully passed the exams for the Faculty of Industrial and Civil Engineering of the Riga Polytechnic Institute in a group of applicants who did not have work experience. Such freshmen were obliged to work at the enterprise for the future specialty during the day, and to study in the evenings, but they were provided with a hostel. This was a decisive factor for Klaucen, and work was necessary to provide for himself.

During his studies, Arnold Klauzen worked at the Montazhnik plant ^[2] . The director of the plant, Isaak Rafailovich Kaplan, nominated him to the post of secretary of the party organization, which determined the fate of the young man ^[4] . In 1965, he joined the Oktyabrsky District Party Committee of Riga.

In the third year, Klauzen met with the employee of the WEF plant Anna Chubenko, who also studied at the evening department of FIR. On March 12, 1966, the couple got married, and in the same year Arnold and Anna completed their higher education, becoming certified civil engineers.

At party work

In 1968, Klaucena was elected secretary of the Oktyabrsky district party committee, and in 1970 he was invited to head the construction department of the Riga City Committee. The annual construction plan in Riga in those years averaged 300 thousand square meters of housing, 2-3 schools, several kindergartens, shopping centers and other social and cultural facilities. Since these works were carried out by large-panel housing construction trusts, Rigastroy, specialized construction organizations for plumbing, electrical, landscaping and road works, the Riga City Executive Committee, as a customer, could not coordinate their interaction so that the work was carried out sequentially and without storming at the end of the year, when it was surrendered operation of 70% of the facilities. Klautzen was the initiator of the study of the experience of the “ Oryol Continuity ” - a methodology for organizing continuous house-building developed in the Oryol Region, and it was successfully implemented in Riga. Klautzen also achieved the use of a brigade contract in construction, when work teams performed the order on a cost-accounting basis, and the money saved could be left at their disposal.

In mid-1973, Klaucena was promoted to the post of first secretary of the Moscow District Party Committee of the City of Riga ^[2] instead of Eric Janovich Auskap , elected first secretary of the Riga City Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia. About 200 thousand people lived in the Moskovsky district at that time, and the party district committee oversaw the party organizations of the Baltic Railways , RCIIGA , the Latvian SSR Academy of Sciences , and many large industrial enterprises.

As the first secretary of the district committee, Klautzen developed his leadership principles, which he subsequently followed ^[3] .

Firstly, reliance on the team: the apparatus of the district committee workers and the party asset in grassroots organizations.

Secondly, the selection of cadres with the formation of a reserve of leaders from the most talented party workers.

Thirdly, the organization of interaction between business leaders and party organizers so that the former do not crush the latter, but use the power of a public organization to improve the operation of the enterprise ^[5] .

In order to provide the region’s enterprises with new personnel, the work of training and production plants was improved, where high school students received working professions: training facilities were created directly at the “ Latvia ” sewing association, the “Mara” knitting association, the Riga jewelry factory and other enterprises. In the park near the Riga Sports Arena , a young aviator center was created on board the decommissioned Tu-134 aircraft.

In 1976, Klautzen was first elected to the Supreme Council of the Latvian SSR ^[2] .

In 1978, Klaucena was transferred to the Riga City Party Committee for the post of construction secretary, and then, in 1980, to Liepaja , where he heads the party city committee on the recommendation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia ^[1] . Using the approach of the 40th anniversary of Liepaja’s heroic defense in 1941, the city party committee was able to convince the State Planning Commission of the need to allocate additional funds for the improvement of the city. The Baltic Fleet, whose base was located in Liepaja, also helped. The city was divided into zones assigned to patronizing industrial enterprises, which, together with the city executive committee, put Liepaja in order for a year ^[3] .

In May 1984, Klauzen was transferred to the Central Committee apparatus, entrusting the leadership of the light industry department.

At the head of the Riga City Committee

On June 25, 1985, Klautzen was elected the first secretary of the Riga City Party Committee ^[1] . At the same time, he becomes a member of the bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia. In this position, he worked for 6 years, three of which took place in an atmosphere of sharp controversy with the Popular Front of Latvia that arose with the approval of the highest Soviet leadership ^[6] .

Riga during these years was the largest industrial center of the USSR, where half of Soviet mopeds, a third of electric trains, a quarter of trams were produced, as well as Radio Engineering speakers, VEF telephone exchanges that were exported to more than 50 countries of the world. The volume of industrial production of the city amounted to 5.3 billion rubles. Gorkom was worried that the share of top-quality products and products with export potential accounted for about a fifth of the total, and concentrated on the tasks of technical re-equipment of enterprises ^[6] .

Klautzen headed the Riga City Committee when the housing problem was acute in the Latvian capital. Housing stock of 14.7 million sq.m. (270.8 thousand apartments) was worn out by 35.3% with an average of 17% in the cities of the USSR. Almost 14 thousand families lived in emergency apartments, and 40 thousand families lived in communal apartments.

There were not enough places in polyclinics and hospitals, 22 thousand children stood in line for a place in a kindergarten.

To solve these problems, together with the State Planning Committee of the Latvian SSR , a comprehensive program "Housing 2000" was developed, which provided for the construction of ^[7] :

• 7 million sq.m. housing (470 thousand square meters per year);
• preschool institutions for 14,600 places, always with pools;
• hospitals with 4300 beds;
• polyclinics for 9100 visits per shift;
• retail space of 70 thousand square meters .;
• catering facilities for 26,700 seats;
• hotels with 2700 beds;
• cinemas with 6000 seats.

Enterprises were allocated for housing construction, which were allocated sites for construction with economic support (that is, at the expense of the enterprises themselves to provide apartments for their workers), the movement of MZHK began to develop. A progressive series of manufactured prefabricated houses was introduced ^[8] .

The construction of treatment facilities and a new water intake on the Daugava was completed ^[9] . In the XI Five-Year Plan (1981-1985), 127 km of water supply and sewer networks were built in Riga.

As the population of Riga was approaching one million, the design of the metro began. ^[8] By 1988, about 200 exploratory wells had been drilled along the future route; by 1989, the working designs of the first launch complex were approved. The metro movement was planned to begin in 2000-2002. The metro was supposed to be financed from the Union budget, the construction estimate was set at 250 million rubles.

In 1989, Klautzen was elected a deputy of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR ^[8] .

On August 19, 1991, Klautzen with his wife and youngest daughter returned to Riga from vacation in a sanatorium and learned about the creation of the State Emergency Committee. On the same day he was summoned to Moscow for a meeting of the Committee on Defense and State Security of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, of which he was a member. The meeting took place on August 20, it was decided on August 21 to hear the chairman of the KGB of the USSR B.K. Pugo, but on that day the August putsch already failed. In Latvia, the Communist Party was outlawed on August 24, all its employees were dismissed.

In Russia

While the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia A.P. Rubiks was arrested in Riga, Arnold Klautzen was fulfilling his duties in the committee of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He returned to Riga in mid-November 1991, having learned that a criminal case had been instituted against him as a member of the All-Latvian Committee of Public Salvation , created at the mass demonstration of the Interfront in January 1991. It was terminated on August 4, 1992 for lack of corpus delicti. However, the Latvian authorities included him in the list of persons non grata , this ban was canceled only in 2010 ^[3] .

Faced with great difficulties in finding a job, Klauzen decided to move to Russia, which he did in 1992, organizing a private business in collaboration with some of his former party apparatus colleagues.

He became a member of the board of the "Compatriots" foundation, founded by the Committee on Migration Affairs of the Government of the Russian Federation.

In 2001-2013, he worked in the Committee on Migration Affairs of the Government of Moscow and in the Moscow City Duma.

• “The song revolution. How Latvian nationalists defeated the red Latvian shooters ” (Memoirs, testimonies, reflections). - Moscow-St. Petersburg, 2018 .-- 425 p.

• Interview of “Soviet Latvia”, translation published in “Rīgas balss” (1990) (Latvian)