Georgy Pyatakov

Who was Georgy Pyatakov?

Georgy Leonidovich Pyatakov was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader during the Russian Revolution, and member of the Left Opposition.

Pyatakov was born August 6, 1890 in the settlement of the Mariinsky sugar factory which was owned by his father, an ethnic Russian, Leonid Timofeyevich Pyatakov.

He started political activity as an anarchist while he was in secondary school, but joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1910. In 1912 he joined the Bolshevik faction. He was arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1912 with his partner, Evgenia Bosh, but they soon escaped and made their way to Switzerland where they joined the émigré revolutionary community. Pyatakov and Bosh remained together until she died by suicide in 1925 as a protest against the Stalinist regime.

His opinion on some points of the theory and tactics of the revolutionary struggle contradicted that of the party Central Committee.

He was one of Lenin’s fiercest opponents on the national problem, with regard to the question of the course to be followed towards the socialist revolution, and on the issue of the Bolseviks' peace settlement with Germany.