Lev Kamenev
Lev Borisovich Kamenev (18 July 1883 – 25 August 1936), born Leo Rosenfeld or Lev Borisovich Rozenfeld, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician.
Kamenev's father was Boris Rosenfeld, a rich Jewish court official and "honorary burgher", and his mother a Russian. Lev was the brother-in-law of Leon Trotsky. With a good education he was a graduate of Moscow University, during which time he became a radical socialist, coming into collision with the Tsarist Police even before his twentieth year. He joined the Bolsheviks but maintained an independent position inside the Party. He wrote several political treatises on Bolshevism. One of those was his notorious Programme of the Communists, which revealed with almost brutal nakedness the real aims and aspirations of the Bolsheviks. He was theoretically more extreme and more doctrinaire in his ideas than Lenin, with whom he was not afraid to cross swords in dialectical duels. Despite being the Chief Bolshevik treaty opponent, he was a member of the first Treaty of Brest-Litovsk delegation in March 1918 and wrote a book on that Treaty. After that he was appointed Bolshevik Ambassador to Vienna, but was unable to proceed to his post owing to his capture and arrest by the Finns, who kept him imprisoned until July 1919. In 1920 he was given the important role of President of the Moscow Soviet.[1]
Joseph Stalin viewed Kamenev as a cause of discontent and opposition to his own leadership. Kamenev was executed during the Great Purge.
External links
Encyclopedias
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Lev Kamenev
- Encyclopedia.com: Lev Borisovich Kamenev
- Encyclopedia.com: Kamenev, Lev
Sources
- ↑ The Times, London, cited in Some Bolshevist Portraits by "International Conciliation", New York City, February 1920, booklet no.147, p.59-60.
