Olga Kameneva | |
|---|---|
| Ольга Каменева | |
 Kameneva in 1926 | |
| Chairwoman of the Soviet Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries | |
| In office 1926–28 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1883-11-19)19 November 1883 (N.S.) |
| Died | 11 September 1941(1941-09-11) (aged 57) |
| Party | RSDLP (1902–1912) Bolsheviks (1912–1918) CPSU (1918–1936) |
| Spouse | |
| Relations | Leon Trotsky (elder brother) |
| Children | 2 |
Olga Davidovna Kameneva (Russian:Ольга Давыдовна Каменева,Ukrainian:Ольга Давидiвна Каменева; 19 November [O.S. 7 November] 1883 – 11 September 1941) (néeBronstein — Бронште́йн) was a RussianBolshevikrevolutionary and aSovietpolitician. She was the sister ofLeon Trotsky and the first wife ofLev Kamenev.
Olga Bronstein was born inYanovka,Kherson Governorate,Russian Empire (present-dayKirovohrad Oblast,Ukraine), a small village 15 miles from the nearest post office. She was one of two daughters of a wealthy but illiterate farmer, David Leontyevich Bronstein (or Bronshtein, 1847–1922), aJew, and Anna Lvovna (née Zhivotovskaya) (1850–1910). Although the family was of Jewish extraction, they were not religious and the languages spoken at home wereRussian andUkrainian, notYiddish.[1]
Olga joined theRussian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902[1] and soon married Lev Kamenev, a fellowMarxist revolutionary. In 1908, after Kamenev's release from prison, the couple left Russia forGeneva and thenParis, where Kamenev became one ofVladimir Lenin's two deputies. The couple helped Lenin edit the main Bolshevik magazineProletariy. In January 1914, the Kamenevs moved toSt. Petersburg so that Lev could be in immediate control of the Bolsheviks' legal newspaperPravda and theirDuma faction.
In early 1918, after theOctober Revolution of 1917, Kameneva was put in charge of the Theater Division (TEO) of thePeople's Commissariat for Education. Working with theatrical director and theoristVsevolod Meyerhold, she tried to radicalize Russian theaters, effectively nationalizing them under Bolshevik control. However, Meyerhold came down withtuberculosis in May 1919 and had to leave for the South. In his absence, the head of the Commissariat,Anatoly Lunacharsky, secured Lenin's permission to revise government policy in favor of more traditional theaters and dismissed Kameneva in June.[2]
From the time it was organized in October 1919, Kameneva was a member of the board of directors of theSoviet Communist Party's Women's Section.[3] In 1920, she supportedPeople's Commissar ofPublic HealthNikolai Semashko's opinion thatcontraception was "unquestionably harmful" and should not be advocated.[4]
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Between 1921 and 1923, Kameneva was a leading member of the Central Commission for Fighting the After-Effects of the Famine[5] and oversaw a propaganda campaign against theAmerican Relief Administration (ARA) underHerbert Hoover in the Soviet press. Between 1923 and 1925, she was the head of the Commission for Foreign Relief (KZP), a Soviet governmental commission that regulated and then liquidated remaining Western charities in theSoviet Union.[6] From 1926 to 1928, Kameneva served as chairman of theUSSR Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries ("Voks", Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo Kul'turnoi Sviazi s Zagranitsei)[7] In that capacity she greeted many prominent Western visitors to the Soviet Union, e.g.Le Corbusier[8] andTheodore Dreiser,[9] and represented the Soviet Union at the festivities inVienna commemorating the centennial ofLudwig van Beethoven's death in March–April 1927.[10] Throughout the 1920s, she also ran a leading literarysalon in Moscow.[11]
In 1927, shortly before she was removed from office, the composerSergei Prokofiev visited her in the Kremlin. He wrote in his dairy that "Olga Davidovna herself seemed to be a lively, agreeable, somewhat American-style lady" whose office was "an enormous room, quite comfortably appointed with magnificent armchairs, sofas, many bookcases and bookshelves."[12]
In the early 1920s, Kameneva's family life began to disintegrate, starting with Lev Kamenev's reputed affair with theBritishsculptorClare Sheridan in 1920.[13] In the late 1920s, he left Kameneva for Tatiana Glebova,[14] with whom he had a son, Vladimir Glebov (1929–1994).[15]
Kameneva quickly lost her influence after Kamenev and Trotsky's defeat at the Communist Party Congress in December 1927. On 27 July 1935, theNKVD (Soviet secret police) Special Board banned her fromMoscow andLeningrad for 5 years in connection with theKremlin Affair.[16] After Lev Kamenev'sshow trial and execution on 25 August 1936, she was arrested and imprisoned. Her younger son, Yuri Lvovich Kamenev, was executed on 30 January 1938 at the age of 17. Her older son, Air Force officer Alexander Lvovich Kamenev, was executed on 15 July 1939 at the age of 33.[17] Her brother (Leon Trotsky) was attacked in Mexico City on 20 August 1940 and died the next day.
In 1941, Kameneva was inOryol Prison. She was shot on 11 September in theMedvedev forest outsideOryol together withChristian Rakovsky,Maria Spiridonova and 160 other prominent political prisoners in theMedvedev Forest massacre.[18] This execution was one of the manyNKVD prisoner massacres committed in 1941.
Kameneva is the main protagonist in the novel,The Impossible History of Trotsky's Sister by Maree F. Roberts, published in June 2021. In the novel, she is given a second, imagined life inMelbourne, Australia, afterWorld War Two.[19]
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