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Garegin Apresov

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His Excellency
Garegin Abramovich Apresov
Гарегин Абрамович Апресов
Soviet Consul General in Urumqi
In office
December 1933 – March 1937
Preceded byMoisei Nemchenko
Succeeded byAdi Malikov
Personal details
Born(1890-01-06)6 January 1890
Qusar, Baku Governorate, Caucasus Viceroyalty, Russian Empire
Died11 September 1941(1941-09-11) (aged 51)
Medvedev Forest, Oryol, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Cause of deathExecution
CitizenshipSoviet Union
NationalityArmenian
Political partyCommunist Party of the Soviet Union
Alma materMoscow State University
ProfessionDiplomat
AwardsOrder of Lenin

Garegin Abramovich Apresov (Russian: Гарегин Абрамович Апресов; 6 January 1890 – 11 September 1941) was a Soviet diplomat and intelligence officer, most notable for his tenure in Xinjiang during Sheng Shicai's rule.

Life

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Garegin A. Apresov (Apresoff, Apresof) was born to an Armenian family in Qusar in what was then Baku Governorate in Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire. His parents lived in Baku, but they had a dacha in Qusar. As a 6th grade student at the gymnasium, in 1908 he joined the revolutionary movement[1][2][3].

He studied law at the Moscow University and graduated in 1914. He spoke several foreign languages.[4]

In 1915 he was called up for military service[5] and served as a soldier on the Caucasian Front in the city of Kars. He was later sent to the ensign school in Tiflis. After finishing school, he served on the Persian border in the 4th Cavalry Border Regiment, from where, for anti-war work among the soldiers, he was transferred under supervision to the detachment headquarters and appointed to the position of adjutant of the headquarters[1].

He joined the Communist Party in 1918.[6]

From 1917 to 1918 he was the President of the Lankaran Municipal Council. In March 1918 he was named a member of a government's directorate in Baku and later a member of the Directorate for Food in Baku. He provided assistance in organizing food supplies to Baku, which was experiencing a severe food crisis[4]. In the same year, he became a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Saratov.

From 1918 to 1919 he was the Leader of the Provincial Justice Department in Saratov.[5]

In 1920, he was involved in underground activity in the Caucasus.[5] Before the Sovietization of Azerbaijan, he worked for the underground Regional Committee, carrying out special tasks for the latter, which mainly boiled down to organizing the financial and monetary operations of the Regional Committee[1].

From 1921 to 1921, Apresov served as Deputy People's Commissar for Justice of the Azerbaijan SSR and as a commander of a brigade of the Red Army. Between 1921 and 1922 he was a member of the Collegiate of the People's Commissars for Justice in the Georgian SSR.[5]

From 1922 to 1923 he served as the Soviet Consul in Rasht, Persia, from 1924 to 1925 in Isfahan, Persia, and from 1923 to 1926 in Mashhad, Persia. For some time he was also a representative of the Foreign Department of the Joint State Political Directorate (INO OGPU) and Soviet Interim Commissioner for Persia (1923–24).[5][7] According to G.S. Agabekov, he was also a representative of Soviet military intelligence and the Comintern.[8] G.S. Agabekov spoke about G.A. Apresov as follows:[8]

A lawyer by training, very intelligent, well versed in the psychology of the East, fluent in Persian and the Turkic dialect, loving risk and adventure, he was created by nature to work in the OGPU in the East. In addition, he had some practice in his work. While being the Soviet consul in Rasht, he managed to steal the consul's archive through the mistress of the English consul in Rasht, thereby winning the full trust of this institution. Apresov got to work, and by the middle of 1923, copies of all the secret correspondence of the British consulate in Meshed with the British envoy in Tehran and with the Indian general staff began to arrive from him.

Apresov was characterized by the plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Persia, K.K. Yurenev, as an excellent intelligence officer[9].

He was also described by British diplomats as an ardent communist and energetic propagandist. According to their testimony, the governor of Gilan was completely "under the thumb" of Apresov and supported the communist program[10]. Apresov actively worked with the Armenian diaspora in Persia and tried to influence the church policy of the local Armenian church[11].

Between September 1927 and July 1928, Apresov served as a member of the Military Collegiate of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, but resigned at his own request.[12] From 1927 to 1932 he was a People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID) agent in Baku. He was NKID's plenipotentiary before the Council of People's Commissars of the Azerbaijan SSR in 1929 and the Uzbek SSR[5] and the Soviet Central Asia in 1930.[7]

In 1935, he was named the Soviet General Consul and Representative of the INO OGPU in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China. At the same time, he was the Commissioner of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, whose tasks included ensuring that representatives of all departments pursue a single line; employees of other people's commissariats were prohibited from taking any actions that had or could have political significance for the USSR without the prior permission of the Commissioner of the Central Committee.[13] He wielded so much power in Xinjiang that he became generally known as "Tsar" Apresoff.[14]

In 1935 he was awarded the Order of Lenin.[15]

From 1935 to 1936 he was Chief of the Second Eastern Department of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union (NKID).[5][7]

Swedish traveler Sven Hedin, who met G. A. Apresov in Urumqi, described him as an open, good-natured and cheerful person[16]. Apresov significantly helped Hedin in obtaining permits from the Chinese authorities to organize his expedition. Hedin was also warmly received at the USSR Consulate General, and a large banquet was organized in honor of the meeting. English traveler and diplomat Eric Teichman was also warmly received at the USSR Consulate General and even participated in the lavish celebration of October Revolution Day[17]. After Apresov was arrested by NKVD officers in 1937, he was, among others, accused of espionage with Teichman[18].

Arrest and death

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In 1937, Chinese warlord Sheng Shicai launched his own purge to coincide with Stalin's Great Purge. He received assistance from the NKVD. Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive Trotskyist conspiracy and a "Fascist Trotskyite plot" to destroy the Soviet Union. G. A. Apresov was among the 435 alleged conspirators; moreover, he allegedly led the conspiracy.[19][20]

In March 1937[12] he was recalled from service in China and arrested. He was dismissed from the NKID on 13 July 1937.

At first he was held in Butyrka prison, and his case was handled by NKVD investigator T. M. Dyakov. He was accused of spying for Britain. Later, Dyakov himself was arrested as an enemy of the people and testified against the Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD of the USSR L. N. Belsky, who, according to him, gave the order to obtain a confession from G. A. Apresov[18]. Subsequently, Belsky was subjected to repression and was shot. Later Apresov was transferred to Sukhanovo special security prison for important political prisoners ("particularly dangerous enemies of the people")[21] , where he was subjected to torture and torment[18].

On 13 July 1940 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison[5][12] under the accusation of the anti-Soviet activity based on the Art. 58-10 RSFSR Penal Code. He did not admit guilt at the meeting of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, saying that he had stipulated himself earlier as a result of the use of physical methods of influence.[22] He also accused head of NKVD Nikolay Yezhov's former first deputy Mikhail Frinovsky, with whom he had had strained relations since both worked in Baku in 1930, of slander. At the court hearing, he stated that as a result of the use of physical methods of influence, his teeth were knocked out and he became deaf in one ear.

He later wrote a letter to the chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, in which he stated that "he was forced to incriminate himself under torture" and that "for health reasons he could not endure torture". In the letter, he also said that in his testimony he introduced fantasy foreign agents with unusual names, which in different languages, including Armenian, mean "Forced Untruth," "All Untruth," "Pure Untruth," "Big Untruth." He called for an assessment of this circumstance and an additional investigation[18].

On 8 September 1941, on the basis of Decree No. GKO-634ss, without initiating a criminal case and conducting preliminary and trial proceedings, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Vasiliy Ulrikh (members of the collegium D. Ya. Kandibin and Vasiliy Bukanov), sentenced Apresov and 161 prisoners of the Oryol Prison to death penalty under Art. 58-10 RSFSR Penal Code.[12] He was shot on 11 September 1941 in the Medvedev Forest near Oryol, in an event known as the Medvedev Forest massacre.[5]

G. A. Apresov was rehabilitated in 1956.[23][24]

Family

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Apresov brothers. From left to right - standing - Sergei Abramovich and Gurgen Abramovich. Sitting: Grigory Abramovich, Konstantin Abramovich and Garegin Abramovich. 1930

Wife - Lidiya Artemyevna Apresova

Brother - Sergei Abramovich Apresov (10.1.1895, Baku - 4.7.1938) - graduate of the Military Medical Academy, head of the hospital in Baku. He was arrested on March 3, 1938, and charged under Art. 21/64, 21/70, 73, 72 of the Criminal Code of the AzSSR by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. On July 4, 1938, he was sentenced to capital punishment and shot on the same day. S. A. Apresov was rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on April 14, 1956, for lack of corpus delicti.[25]

Brother - Konstantin Abramovich Apresov

Brother - Tsovak Abramovich Apresov

Brother - Gurgen Abramovich Apresov

Brother - Grigory Abramovich Apresov

References

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b c Garegin Apresov Long Autobiography 1937.
  2. ^ Garegin Apresov Short Autobiography 2.
  3. ^ Garegin Apresov Short Autobiography 1.
  4. ^ a b "ASMRB / Sinkiang". asmrb.pbworks.com. Retrieved 2023-11-15.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Апресов, Гарегин Абрамович. Энциклопедия фонда «Хайазг».
  6. ^ Апресов Георгий (Гарегин) Абрамович
  7. ^ a b c "АПРЕСОВ Гарегин Абрамович". Archived from the original on 2017-08-15. Retrieved 2017-11-12.
  8. ^ a b Агабеков, Георгий (2022-04-16). Секретный террор Сталина. Исповедь резидента (in Russian). Litres. ISBN 978-5-457-57347-5.
  9. ^ Yurenev's characteristics of Garegin Apresov, retrieved 2025-02-13
  10. ^ "Notes on Garegin Apresov". sso.passport.yandex.ru. Retrieved 2025-02-15.
  11. ^ Minassian, Taline Ter (2019-06-15). Komintern'in Seyyar Militanları: Sovyetler Birliği ve Ortadoğu’daki Azınlıklar (in Turkish). YORDAM KİTAP. ISBN 978-605-172-342-6.
  12. ^ a b c d Zvyagintsev 2005, p. 54.
  13. ^ "Архив 9 номера 2022 года Советская дипломатическая служба в 1930-х годах: китайское направление". Журнал Международная жизнь. Retrieved 2023-11-15.
  14. ^ Oriental Affairs: A Monthly Review. 1935.
  15. ^ "01068". www.knowbysight.info. Retrieved 2023-11-15.
  16. ^ Hedin Sven (1936). The Silk Road.
  17. ^ Teichman, Eric (1937). Journey to Turkistan.
  18. ^ a b c d The Central Archive of the FSB, archival criminal case No. R-23732 against Apresov Garegin Abramovich.
  19. ^ Chen, Yong-ling (1990). The Rule of Sinkiang by Feudal Warlord Sheng Shih-ts'ai, a Chameleon in Communist and Nationalist Garb: (1933 - 1944). Stanford Univ., Anthropology Department.
  20. ^ Whiting and Shih-ts'ai (1958). Sinkiang--Pawn or Pivot.
  21. ^ "Каталог мемуаров архива общества Мемориал". memoirs.memo.ru. Retrieved 2023-11-15.
  22. ^ The minutes of the court session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, the Central Archive of the FSB, archival criminal case No. R-23732 against Apresov Garegin Abramovich.
  23. ^ "Списки жертв - дополнения". lists.memo.ru. Retrieved 2023-11-22.
  24. ^ "Спецобъект 110 СУХАНОВКА: Списки узников". Спецобъект 110 СУХАНОВКА. Retrieved 2023-11-22.
  25. ^ "Апресов Сергей Абрамович (1895)". Открытый список (in Russian). Retrieved 2023-11-22.

Books

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  • Zvyagintsev, Vyacheslav Yegorovich (2005). Война на весах Фемиды: война 1941–1945 гг. в материалах следственно-судебных дел (in Russian). Терра.
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