Vladimir Zabrezhnev

Vladimir Ivanovich Zabrezhnev
Владимир Иванович Забрежнев
Born	(1877-03-28)March 28, 1877 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	March 9, 1939(1939-03-09) (aged 61) Leningrad, Soviet Russia
Spouse(s)	Edda Stepanovna Zabrezhneva
Children	Mikhail Vladimirovich Zabrezhnev, Stepan Vladimirovich Zabrezhnev

Vladimir Ivanovich Zabrezhnev (March 28, 1877, Petersburg – March 9, 1939, Leningrad) was a Russian revolutionary, criminologist and NKVD officer.

Biography[]

Vladimir Ivanovich Zabrezhnev was born into a merchant family. His father was Fyodorov Ivan Fyodorovich, a merchant of the Second Guild, hereditary honorary citizen of St. Petersburg. His mother was Olympiada Nikolaevna. In 1895 he graduated from the Petrovskoe Commercial School of the Petersburg Merchant Society. He was a volunteer at the natural department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University and at the same time at the biological courses of Professor Peter Lesgaft.

He joined the revolutionary movement, becoming a member of the Marxist circle of law students. He taught at the Sunday school for workers of the factories outside , founded several social-democratic circles and working groups in the residential barracks of the Petrovsko-Spasskaya manufactory of Paul-Maxwell. He participated in the preparation and distribution of printed publications of the St. Petersburg Social Democrats at the enterprises of the city. At the beginning of 1899 he joined the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.

On April 17, 1899, he was arrested in connection with the "case of preparing a May Day demonstration." At the time of the investigation, he was placed in the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. In August 1899, he was released on bail by his father under police supervision until the verdict was announced. From October 13, 1900, on the basis of the Imperial command, he was given under the public supervision of the police for 3 years and exiled to Novgorod (then transferred to Saratov) with a ban on living in the capital, provincial and several other cities of Russia. In 1903, after the end of the deportation, he went abroad.

Under the influence of his acquaintances Peter Kropotkin and Georgy Gogelia, he went joined the anarchist movement, considering himself an anarchist-communist from 1904. In 1904–1905 he was occasionally published in the newspaper "Khleb i Volya".

Revolution of 1905[]

In March 1905, together with N. I. Muzil (Rodgaev) and his wife O. I. Malitskaya, he returned to Russia, he participated in the creation of a South Russian group of anarchist communists in Kiev, where he published the newspaper "Nabat". On April 30, 1905, he fled during the liquidation of the circle and left for Moscow.

In early May 1905 he was one of the organizers of the first Moscow group of anarchist communists: "Bread and Freedom". He left to promote anarchism and recruit members of the organization in the Volga region. In June 11, 1905, he returned to Moscow. At the dacha in the village, Bogorodsky reprinted materials from the newspaper "Bread and Volya" on a hectograph. On July 16, 1905, he was arrested during the liquidation of the Bread and Freedom group in the village. When arrested, he tried to provide armed resistance. He was brought to trial by a military court on charges of attempted murder of Captain Krushinsky and for belonging to an anarchist group. From July 18 to November 24, 1905 (according to other sources – November 28, 1905), he was held in Butyrka prison. By decision of the Moscow Court of Justice, in view of the Imperial decree on amnesty, he was released on a bail of 300 rubles, before the trial, in view of the transfer of the case to the criminal court.

On December 6–17, 1905, together with other Moscow anarchists, he participated in the December armed uprising. He organized among the workers of the publishing house br. Grenade a non-partisan combat squad and a sanitary point. He took part in the last battles at Presnya. Arrested on December 19, 1905, he was placed in the Arbat police station, and then after staging an arson, in the Butyrka prison hospital. On February 18, 1906, he escaped from it (disguised in the uniform of a judicial investigator) and disappeared abroad.

In exile[]

Until 1917 he lived mainly in Paris. He participated in the work of Russian foreign anarchist groups and collaborated in the anarchist press. In September 1906 – as a participant in the congress of Russian anarchists-communists in London, made a report "On terror". In August–September 1907 he was a member of the delegation of the anarchists of Russia at the International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam. At the bureau of the forum, he presented a report "Preachers of individualist anarchism in Russia."

In 1912–1913, he was editor of the magazine of the Parisian anarchist communists "Molot" (only 2 issues were published).^[1] In the early 1910s, he actively participated in the life of the masonic lodges of the Grand East of France.^[2] In 1915 he was the secretary of the lodges for the Paris region.

After the revolution[]

After the February Revolution, he returned to Russia, where he gave lectures and reports in various cities of the country. He was the personal secretary of the Minister of Food of Alexey Peshekhonov's Provisional Government. He edited the anarchist newspaper Voice of Labor.

In 1918 he went over to the side of the Bolsheviks, joining the Russian Communist Party. He worked as a secretary of the Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (1919–1920). In 1919, being an employee of the foreign department of the Russian Telegraph Agency, he carried out Lenin's secret assignments abroad.

In 1921, Zabrezhnev was appointed deputy head of the press and information department of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. In September 1922, he was accepted into the service of the Criminal Investigation Department of the RSFSR and was appointed to the post of assistant to the head of the scientific and technical department of the OGPU. In June 1923, for health reasons, Zabrezhnev quit his job from the internal affairs bodies.

In 1926–1927 he went on secret mission in Urumqi.

In 1929 he was appointed Acting Director of the Hermitage Museum. In this position, he was involved in the Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings. Zabrezhnev's signature stands under the acts of transferring hundreds of paintings for sale.^[3]

From 1932 he worked as a censor of the foreign department of Lenoblgorlit. On August 3, 1938, he was expelled from the Communist Party for having fought against the party in 1917 and for contacting the enemy of the people Lev Karakhan. He was subsequently arrested. On March 9, 1939, he died in the hospital at the House of Pretrial Detention from a weakening of cardiac activity.

Essays[]

• "On Terror", in the book: "Russian Revolution and Anarchism. Papers read at the Congress of Communists-Anarchists in October 1906 ”, London, 1907;
• "Preachers of Individualist Anarchism in Russia (Report to the Amsterdam Congress of Anarchist Communists, held on August 24–31, 1907)", "Burevestnik", Paris, 1908, No. 10-11;
• "On individualistic anarchism." London. 1912.
• “The first years of my party work (1895–1899)”, “Proletarian Revolution”, 1923, no. 10;
• "Butyrki 1905 and the first successful escape from them." "Hard labor and exile", 1925, No. 4;
• "Behind the Mass", in the book: "December 1905 at Krasnaya Presnya", 3rd ed., M., 1925.
• "Theory and Practice of Mental Impact", 1922.
• "Controversial Issues of Hypnology", 1925.
• "Problems of Modern Hypnology", 1926.

References[]