The activities of the politician, nicknamed contemporaries "Iron Felix", causes an ambiguous reaction. Some call him a hero, some call him an executioner who knows no pity. Many of Dzerzhinsky’s statements about politics, economics, and the state apparatus are of interest today.
Children and young years
Felix Edmundovich was born in 1877 in the territory of today's Belarus, in the Vilnius province. The parents of the future revolutionary come from an intellectual environment: mother, Polish by nationality - the daughter of a professor; father, Jew - teacher of the gymnasium. In 1822, Felix's father dies, and the mother is left alone with eight children. Despite the difficult financial situation, they try to give children a good education. A boy who does not know Russian at all is sent to the Imperial Gymnasium. Study did not work out. Dzerzhinsky, who dreams of becoming a priest (a Catholic priest), has only one positive mark in his education certificate on the subject “The Law of God”.
In 1835, as a student of the gymnasium, the young man became a member of the Social Democratic movement.
I hated wealth, because I fell in love with people, because I see and feel with all the strings of my soul that today people worship the golden calf, which turned human souls into bestial ones and expelled love from people's hearts ...
For the spread of revolutionary ideas in 1897 he was arrested. After a year of imprisonment, in 1898, Dzerzhinsky was sent into exile in the Vyatka province. There he continues to campaign among factory workers. The frantic revolutionary is being transferred to a remote area, to the village of Kaygorodskoye. Deprived of the opportunity to agitate, Dzerzhinsky makes an escape to Lithuania, from where he moves to Poland.
Revolutionary activity
Dzerzhinsky continues to serve the “cause of the revolution” by joining in 1900 the Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania (SDPiL). Acquaintance with the Leninist publication Iskra strengthens his convictions. In 1903, after his election as secretary of the SDPPiL foreign committee, Dzerzhinsky arranged for the transfer of banned literature and the publication of the newspaper Krasnoye Znamya. As a member of the Party’s Main Board (elected in 1903), he organizes sabotage and uprisings of workers in Poland. After the Petrograd events, in 1905, he leads the May Day demonstration.
The result of a personal meeting between Dzerzhinsky and Lenin in Stockholm in 1906 was the entry of Dzerzhinsky into the RSDLP (Russian Social Democratic Party).
In 1909, a revolutionary continuing his party work was arrested, deprived of his estate rights, and sent to a life settlement in Siberia. From the moment he joined the Bolshevik Party until the February Revolution of 1917, he was sent to prison eleven times, then to exile or to hard labor. Each time making an escape, Dzerzhinsky returns to party activity.
Dzerzhinsky’s remarks show his frenzied position as a professional revolutionary:
Relax, comrades, in prison.
Remember that in the soul of people like me there is a holy spark ... that gives happiness even at the stake.
After the February Revolution of 1917, Dzerzhinsky became a member of the Moscow Committee of the Bolshevik organization. Here he is engaged in propaganda of an armed uprising. Lenin appreciates the personal qualities of Dzerzhinsky and includes him in the composition of the military revolutionary center. F. E. Dzerzhinsky is one of the organizers of the October armed coup.
To live - doesn’t this mean to have an unshakable faith in victory?
"Chief security officer"
The Bolsheviks who gained victory as a result of the armed coup came to power in 1917. Immediately there was a need to create an organization that would oppose the opponents of the revolution. F.E.Dzerzhinsky was appointed the chairman of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Fight against Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka), created in December 1917. The punitive organization received broad powers, including the right to independently impose the death penalty. After moving from Petrograd in 1919, KGB officers occupy a building on Lubyanka. There is also a prison, shooting teams work in the basements.
Dzerzhinsky’s statements about the Chekists became his slogan in the fight against counter-revolution:
Anyone who becomes cruel and whose heart remains insensitive to prisoners should leave here. Here, as in no other place, you need to be kind and noble.
Either saints or scoundrels can serve in organs.
A Chekist can only be a person with a cold head, a warm heart and clean hands.
The abbreviation "Cheka" is one of the most famous names of the XX century. The department chairman did not tolerate dissent. It Dzerzhinsky is considered the initiator of the persecution of the intelligentsia and the clergy.
The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about him:
It was a fanatic. In his eyes he made the impression of a man possessed. There was something terrible in him ... In the past, he wanted to become a Catholic monk and he transferred his fanatic faith to communism.
The idealist, who hated the cruelties of the tsarist secret police, fabricated cases, torture, prisons, hard labor, became an executioner.
I strive with all my heart to ensure that there is no injustice, crime, drunkenness, debauchery, excesses, excessive luxury, brothels in which people sell their body or soul, or both together; so that there is no oppression, fratricidal wars, national hostility ...
Created by Dzerzhinsky and his associates of the Cheka, over time, has become one of the most effective special services in the world.
Administrative activities
In addition to acting as chairman of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky takes an active part in the fight against devastation. Dzerzhinsky’s statements are a demonstration of his view on the restoration of a destroyed state.
We must go and explain to every worker and peasant that we [Russia] need funds in order to move our plants, to have enough of our raw materials, so that we do not be so dependent on foreign countries as we can get, if we to build the development of our economy solely through import from abroad ...
I am not preaching here that we can isolate ourselves from abroad. This is absurd, and this is not necessary at all. But in order not to fall into bondage from foreign capitalists who follow our every move, and when it is wrong, they will immediately try to use it, for this we must work hard.
The result of the activities of Dzerzhinsky as commissar of railways in the 1920s was the restoration of more than 10 thousand km of the railway, more than 200 thousand steam locomotives and more than 2000 bridges. Having personally traveled to Siberia, in 1919 he was able to supply about 40 million tons of grain to the starving regions. By organizing the supply of medicines, he contributed to the fight against typhoid.
Creation of orphanages
A separate discussion deserves the activities of the chairman of the Cheka at the post of chairman of the Commission on Combating Homelessness, whose tasks included the organization of labor communes and orphanages. The buildings confiscated from the "former" have become a haven for a whole generation of street children.
A huge task is facing you: to educate and shape the souls of your children. Be watchful! For the fault or merit of the children to a large extent rests on the head and conscience of the parents.
Love for a child, like any great love, becomes creativity and can give a child lasting, true happiness when it enhances the scope of a lover's life, makes him a full-fledged person, and does not turn his beloved being into an idol.
Economic activity
In 1922, without leaving the post of chairman of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky heads the Main Political Directorate of the NKVD and takes part in the formation of the new economic policy of the state (NEP). In 1924, Dzerzhinsky became the head of the Higher National Economy of the USSR. He initiates the creation of joint stock companies and enterprises with the attraction of foreign capital. Dzerzhinsky is a supporter of the development of private capital in Soviet Russia, and calls for the creation of favorable conditions for this.
Dzerzhinsky's statements about the economy:
A currency is that sensitive thermometer that takes into account what irregularities exist.
If we are now wooden, bastard Russia, then we must become metal Russia.
When we [Russia] build our plants, begin to develop our wealth, foreign investors will come to us themselves. But when we kneel before them, they will only despise us and will not give a dime.
Well, we [Russia] are a peasant state, but our productivity is lower than in Holland, Germany and France. Why? Because, firstly, we do not have nitrogen fertilizers. So, we need to create a chemical industry for agriculture. Secondly, we plow on horseback, and all over the world they have long forgotten about it. We need tractors - but where to get them? We need to build tractor and combine plants, which means we need a powerful metallurgical base, which we have is weak. So, it is necessary to build metallurgical plants, for the work of which it is necessary to develop deposits of iron ore, non-ferrous metals and so on.
Exports should prevail over imports, and the balance for specific types of products and goods should be determined strictly on a planned basis. We [in Russia] each trust and syndicate - on its own. In almost all matters: salary, restoration work, concentration, market mastery. And everyone strove to use all his "happiness" for himself, and to transfer the "misfortune" to the state, demanding subsidies, subsidies, loans, high prices.
The fight against bureaucracy
The chairman of the Cheka, advocated the fight against bureaucracy and reforming the country's administrative system.
Dzerzhinsky about Russia:
I came to the incontrovertible conclusion that the main work was not in Moscow, but on the ground, that 2/3 of the responsible comrades and specialists from all the party (including the Central Committee), Soviet and trade union institutions needed to be transferred from Moscow to their places. And do not be afraid that the central institutions will fall apart. It is necessary to throw all efforts into factories, factories and into the village in order to really raise labor productivity, and not the work of feathers and stationery. Otherwise, we won’t get out. The best ideas and directions do not even reach here and hang in the air.
So that the state [Russia] does not go bankrupt, it is necessary to solve the problem of state apparatus. The unstoppable bloating of the states, the monstrous bureaucratization of every business - mountains of papers and hundreds of thousands of hacks; captures of large buildings and premises; car epidemic; millions of frills. This is legal and devouring state property by this locust. In addition to this, an unprecedented, shameless bribery, embezzlement, negligence, flagrant mismanagement, characterizing our so-called "cost accounting", crimes that transfer state property into private pockets.
If you look at our entire apparatus of power in Russia, at our entire management system, if you look at our unheard of bureaucracy, our unheard of fuss with all kinds of approvals, then from all this I am directly horrified.
Looking through the eyes of your device is death for the leader.
Iron Felix ”mercilessly fought with the opposition, fearing that a man would come to the post of leader of the country, capable of destroying all the transformations and reforms of the revolution.
The ascetically modest Felix Dzerzhinsky is a “knight of the revolution”, an eternal hard worker who put political and state activity in the first place in his life.
Dzerzhinsky’s selected quotes may serve as a characteristic of the head of the state security department. He died on July 20, 1926 during a report on the state of the economy of the USSR. The official cause of death is a heart attack. However, there is still talk of poisoning.
If I had to live again, I would start the way I started.
They buried F.E. Dzerzhinsky at the Kremlin wall. Soviet propaganda idealized the image of the head of the Cheka, but at the end of the 80s articles appeared that opened some pages of his life and debunk the myth. In August 1991, a monument to Dzerzhinsky on Lubyanka Square was demolished symbolically, as a sign of the end of the era of socialism.