Arvīds Pelše
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Arvīds Pelše Арвид Янович Пельше |
|
 |
|
|
Member of the Soviet Politburo and chairman of the Party Control Committee
|
|
|---|---|
| In office April 8, 1966 – May 29, 1983 |
|
|
|
|
| Born | February 7, 1899 Mazais, Latvia |
| Died | May 29, 1983 (aged 84) Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Nationality | Latvian |
| Political party | Communist Party of the Soviet Union |
| Profession | Historian |
| Religion | Atheist |
Arvīds Pelše (Russian: Арвид Янович Пельше, Arvid Yanovich Pelshe); February 7 [O.S. January 26] 1899, Mazais, Latvia – May 29, 1983, Moscow) was a Soviet politician and functionary.
Contents |
[edit] Career
Pelše was born into a peasant family, in the village of Mazais, in Bauska District. As a worker in Riga, Pelše joined the Social-Democratic Party (Bolsheviks) of the Latvian Region in 1915. In 1916 he met Lenin in Switzerland.[1] Between 1914 and 1918, Pelshe worked in the work-shops of Riga and Vitebsk, as a milling machine operator at the steam-engine making plant in Kharkov, as a punching worker in Petrograd and a loader in the port of Arkhangelsk. On behalf of the local committees he had joined the revolutionary propaganda. He was delegate of the sixth congress of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of the Arkhangelsk party organization. Participated in February revolution in 1917, Pelshe was also a member of the famous Petrograd Soviet. He was actively involved in the preparation and conducting of the October Revolution in 1917. In 1918 he joined the Cheka. In 1918, he was sent by Lenin to Latvia to prosecute the revolution there. In 1919 he was attached to the Red Army and later became a manager in the Construction Ministry of the Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic. After the defeat of the Soviet Latvian régime he returned to Russia in 1919.[1]
He was a lecturer and political commissar in the Red Army from 1919 to 1929. In 1931 he graduated from the history department of the Moscow Institute of the Red Professoriat, and between 1931-1933 he was a graduate student in the institute; At the same time he was an instructor at the Institute of Party History at the Central School of NKVD between 1929-1932. Between 1933-1937 he was first deputy of the Commissariat of State Farms (Sovkhozes). Between 1937-40 he taught history in the Moscow Higher Educational Institute. From March 1941 to 1959 he served as Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist party of Latvia on propaganda and agitation. During the Great Patriotic War in 1941-1945 he had been working to prepare the party and the Soviet cadres to transfrom Latvia to a communist state.
In 1958 he traveled Denmark to attend the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of Denmark.
July 1959 to November 1959 marked the the purge of all nascent nationalism from the Latvian communist party—about 2,000 of the party leadership and activists were stripped of their posts and privileges.
The Soviets elevated Pelše to First Secretary, replacing the purged Kalnbērziņš on November, 25 1959. On January 1960, for example, Pelše promptly denounced his former (purged) associates for deviating from "the right path in carrying out Leninist nationality policy"[2]. From that point forward, the First Secretaries of the Latvian SSR were servile party functionaries, as first embodied by Pelše, whom Latvians regarded as symbols of submissiveness to the Soviets.[3][4]
Pelše was appointed as member of the Central Committee in 1961. That same year, after Yuri Gagarin returned from his space mission, Pelše proposed changing the name of the Latvian capital Rīga—Gagarin was a Rīga resident—to "Gagarin", but even the Soviet central authorities saw this as too extreme an action.
In 1963, Pelshe headed a commission nicknamed "Pelshe Commission", that invastigated the death afair of Sergey Kirov. The commission finished it's work in 1967.[5]
Pelše served as First Secretary of the Latvian SSR until April 15, 1966. At the 23rd Party Congress in 1966 Pelše addressed his colleagues thusly:
- "We will never permit anyone to interfere in our internal affairs but will conduct a determined struggle against any imperialist interference in the affairs of other countries and peoples."
He was rewarded for his faithful service, being selected by the 23rd Party Congress for full membership (one of the few non-Slavs in that position) to the Politburo of the CPSU, a position he held until his death in May 1983. Pelše was also named chair of the Party Control Committee, which oversees the discipline of party members.
When Pelše did not attend Leonid Brezhnev's funeral in November 1982, rumors spread he had died, but a few days later, on November 23, he appeared in a session of the Supreme Soviet.
[edit] Death and legacy
Pelše's health was failing in his last years. He suffered from lung cancer. He also suffered from atelectasis which aggravated the lungs, and worsening cardiopulmonary failure. He died of Cardiac arrest at 5:55, May 29, 1983.[6] Pelše was honoured with a state funeral; His remains lay in state at the House of Trade Unions. On July 2 his ashes were carried by a armoured veichle to Red Square, with the all the Politburo members stand at the top of Lenin's Mausoleum. After lavish eulogies were read by Soviet leader Yuri Andropov and Politburo member Viktor Grishin, his ashes laid to rest in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Pelše wrote some works on the history of the CPSU and the party, on the history of the revolutionary movement in Latvia, anti-capitalists nationalists, the socialist and communist construction in the country.
He was twice awarded with Hero of the Socialist Labor (1969, 1979), 6 Lenin Order, the Order of the October Revolution and other medals. The Rīga Polytechnic Institute was named for Pelše after he died.
Pelše was married to the sister of Suslov's wife.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Who's Who in Russia Since 1900, Martin McCauley
- ^ Soviet Disunion
- ^ Dreifelds, Juris, Latvia in Transition, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- ^ Bogdan, Henry, Histoire des peuples de l’ex-URSS [History of the Peoples of the former USSR], Perrin, Paris, 1993.
- ^ Who Killed Kirov?: The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery, 2000
- ^ Medical assesment appeared in the soviet newspapers on May 31, 1983
[edit] Further reading
Remeikis, Thomas: “A Latvian in the Politbureau: A Political Portrait of Arvids Pelše.” Lituanus 12:1 (1966) 81-84. ISSN 0024-5089
|
|||||||
