Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (1877-1926)

Russian revolutionary; an important leader of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik). Born on September 11, 1877, to a small landlord aristocratic family in the small manor of Dzerzhinovo, Ivyanets County, Wilno province (now Valozhyn District, Minsk), in the kingdom of Poland. In August 1887, he entered a boarding school in Wilno. In the autumn of 1895, he joined the Lithuanian Social-Democratic Party. In April 1896, he voluntarily gave up the Wilno boarding school and embarked on the road of professional revolutionary work.

In March 1897, Dzerzhinsky moved from Wilno to Kowno (Kaunas) to engage in revolutionary work, he published the first Polish underground newspaper, the Kowno Workers’ Newspaper, and organized the shoemaker’s strike in Aleksotas (a suburb of Kowno city). In July 1897, he was arrested for the first time and sentenced to three years’ exile. In August 1899, he secretly fled from the exile (in the province of Vyatka) back to Wilno, then moved to Warsaw, continued to engage in the workers’ movement, and established the Workers Union of the Social-Democratic Party. He went back to Wilno again to participate in discussions regarding the merger of Lithuanian and Polish social democrat parties, subsequently Dzerzhinsky was elected as the secretary to the (central) organization department of this new party. In January 1900, Dzerzhinsky was arrested again and sentenced to five years’ exile. In June 1902, he escaped from exile, returned to Warsaw, then went abroad. In August, he attended a meeting of representatives of the SDKPIL in Berlin. With his initiative, the meeting decided to establish the “Party Committee Abroad” of the SDKPIL and to publish the party’s official publication, the Czerwony Sztandar (Red Banner). Dzerzhinsky was elected as a member of the “Party Committee Abroad”. In July 1903, Dzerzhinsky attended the Fourth Congress of the Social Democrat Party of Poland and Lithuania and the congress made the decision to unite with the SDKPIL with the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). He was elected as a member of the general executive committee of the SDKPIL.

In April 1906, Dzerzhinsky attended the Fourth (Unified) Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party and met Lenin for the first time. He was arrested again in December. In the middle of May 1907, he was elected as a member of the Party Central Committee (RSDLP) in absentia at the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. At the end of May, Dzerzhinsky was released on amnesty. In April 1908, he was arrested again and sentenced to lifelong exile in Siberia. At the end of 1909, he escaped from exile for the third time, secretly returned to Warsaw, and then went to Berlin. After that, he secretly went to Krakow, Warsaw, Lodz and other places to engage in underground revolutionary work. He was arrested for the sixth time in September 1912 and sentenced to three years of hard labor. In May 1916, he was sentenced to six years of hard labor by the Moscow High Court and was freed from Butyrka after the revolution in February 1917.

In August 1917, Dzerzhinsky was elected as a member of the Central Committee at the Sixth Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik). At the plenary session of the Central Committee, he was elected as a member of Collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Interior Affairs and the Secretary of the General Secretariat of the Central Committee and was responsible for handling the entire organizational work of the party. On October 1916, he was elected as a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee at the headquarters of the armed uprising led by the Party Central Committee at the enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (B). During the October Revolution, he was in charge of the communication between the Smolny headquarter compound and the rebel army, and actively participated in the organization of the attack on the “Winter Palace”.

He was elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Central Committee at the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. He was elected as a member of the presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at the meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. After the victory of the October Revolution, he was appointed as the director of the All-Russia Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage in December 1920.

In March 1919, Dzerzhinsky was appointed as a member of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Socialist Republic of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and participated in the first Congress of the Communist International as a representative of the Russian Communist Party (B).

In January 1920, the Presidium of All-Russia Central Executive Committee presented him with the order of the Combat Red Banner. In May, he was appointed Commander in Chief of the Rear Front of the Southwest. In September, he was elected as a member of the Central Committee at the Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). In January 1921, he was elected as the Chairman of the Commission for the Improvement of Children’s Life of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In March, he was elected as the chairman of the Moscow Committee for Improving Workers Lives.

In April, he was elected as the Chairman of the All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption and appointed as the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. In February 1922, he was appointed as deputy chairman of the State Political Directorate under the People’s Commissariat of Interior Affairs. In July 1923, he was elected as a member of the Council of Labor and Defense, and in November, he became the first agency executive of the Joint State Political Directorate of the Soviet Union. In February 1924, he served as the director of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (Vesenkha) of the Soviet Union and as the Chairman of the General Directorate of Political Security of the Soviet Union.

He attended the Congresses of the Communist International and the plenary sessions of the Central Executive Committee for several times. He was consecutively elected as a member of the Central Committee from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Congresses of the Communist Party, as alternate member of the Organizational Bureau of the Party Central Committee since April 1920, and alternate member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (Bolshevik) since June 1924. He was elected as a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies several times from the second to twelfth congresses of the All-Russian Soviet. On July 20, 1926, at the Plenary session of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), when he delivered a speech against the opposition within the party, he died suddenly due to a heart attack.