David Petrovsky (born David Lipetz, also known as Max Goldfarb, Bennett, Humboldt, Brown; September 24, 1886 — September 10, 1937) was a Ukrainian Jewish revolutionary politician, economist, journalist, general of the Red Army, and Soviet statesman. He was an active member of the General Jewish Labour Bund in the Russian Empire and the Jewish Socialist Federation in the United States.
In 1912 he received a Ph.D. in economics from the Free University of Brussels where he studied under Emile Vandervelde. He moved to New York in 1913 where served as the editor of the Jewish Daily Forward newspaper in New York until 1917, when he returned to Ukraine to run for the Russian Constituent Assembly. He was elected a member of the Central Council of Ukraine and its Central Executive Committee (Mala Rada), where he voted for the separation of Ukraine from Russia.
He also served as mayor of Berdichev, one of the most important Jewish centers in Ukraine and in the former Russian Empire. As mayor, Petrovsky helped prevent planned pogroms against the Jewish population of the city between 1917 and 1919. In 1919, he joined the Red Army and later became a senior military official responsible for military education in the Soviet Union. From 1919 to 1924, he led the Directorate of Military Education in the Red Army and co-founded the governmental committee for the fight against antisemitism in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union.
Petrovsky was a member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International from 1924 to 1929 where he was responsible for the formation of communist parties in Great Britain and France. From 1929 to 1937 Petrovsky served as a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy in the Soviet Union. From 1929 to 1937 he headed the General Directorate of Higher and Secondary Technical Education in the Soviet Union where he was responsible for the creation of several hundred universities and technical schools across the Soviet Union that prepared engineers and technical personnel in the accelerated push for the industrialization of the Soviet Union.
Petrovsky was arrested and executed during Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937 in Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated in the Soviet Union in 1958 as a victim of political repression.
Throughout his life, Petrovsky (Lipetz) used the following names: Goldfarb, Bennett, Humboldt, and Brown. Each of these names corresponds to a specific period of his life and work.
Biography
Early life David Lipetz was born in 1886 in Berdychiv in a family of a wealthy textile merchant Efraim Lipetz. He studied in a Jewish school and at home with private tutors where he finished the Russian classical gymnasium course. He was the chairman of the literary and theatrical society of Berdychiv. He soon became interested in revolutionary activities, and in 1902 he joined the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia (Bund). In 1903 he moved to Paris and enrolled in the Russian Higher School of Social Sciences, where he became acquainted with many of the famous revolutionaries: Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Anatoly Lunacharsky.Salman Rejsin, Lexicon of Yiddish Literature, Vilna, 1928, Volume 1 (p.p. 485-7)
At the beginning of the 1905 Russian Revolution, he returned to Russia. He worked among workers of Dvinsk, Bialystok, and Gomel, and was one of the leaders of the strike at Libava-Romny railroad. At the 7th Congress of the Bund, where he first used the pseudonym Max Goldfarb, he was elected a candidate for the Central Committee. At the end of 1906, he was arrested by police and spent three months in prison. After that he left Russia - first to England where he participated at the London 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and then to Brussels, where in 1912 he graduated from the Free University of Brussels with a Ph.D. in Economic Sciences (his supervisor was Emile Vandervelde - the future Minister of State of Belgium).Official History of the Jewish Labour Bund, Volume II (New York, 1962)
Along with his studies, he lectured (as a member of the Bund) in the cities of Belgium and France. Back in Russia, he was actively engaged in party work. At the end of 1912, he was arrested in Odessa and sentenced to exile to Siberia which was then replaced by exile from Russia.
Work in the U.S.
By agreement between the Central Committee of the Bund and the Jewish Socialist Federation (JSF) of the Socialist Party of America, in 1913 David Lipetz came to New York City to conduct work among the Jewish workers and to raise funds for the Bund. In America Lipetz worked and published as Max Goldfarb, and under this name he was elected to the Central Committee of the JSF.
He was sent on a national speaking tour under the auspices of the JSF in early 1914. During the tour he addressed more than 15,000 in about 40 engagements according to the report of JSF Secretary Jacob Salutsky.Jacob Salutsky in The Party Builder, March 21, 1914, pg. 1. In addition to his role as a functionary of the JSF, Goldfarb worked as labor editor of Abraham Cahan's Yiddish-language daily, Forverts (The Forward).Theodore Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia. New York: Viking Press, 1957; p. 168
In the summer 1917 after the bourgeois-democratic February Revolution in Russia, he returned to Russia with a passport in the name of David Lipetz, on the way he stopped in Stockholm at the International Socialist Congress."Dr. M. Goldfarb Will Return to Russia," Advance, 18 May 1917, pp. 1-2.Stockholm Conference, The Public. 1917, 29 June, p.p.628-629
A member of the Central Council of Ukraine and the last mayor of Berdichev Upon arrival, David Lipetz was actively involved in the political life of Russia and Ukraine: ran for Russian Constituent Assembly election in 1917, wrote political articles in Bund magazines. He was elected the member of the Central Council of Ukraine, was the member of its Central Executive Committee (Mala Rada).Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) - fond 495, opis’ 65a, delo 13497, list 12 He was elected the mayor of the city and chairman of the Jewish community of Berdichev - the city with the largest share of Jewish population in Ukraine and the Russian Empire. In January 1919, David Lipetz survived the pogrom committed by haidamaks from the , which was passing through Berdichev. As mayor of the city at that time he also managed to prevent a planned multi-day pogrom in Berdichev that saved thousands of lives. He was bitterly disappointed in the policy of the Ukrainian People's Republic Government, that encouraged Jewish pogroms. Together with Sore Fox and A. Litvak, David Lipetz headed the Social Democratic Bund in Ukraine (Bund SD) after the split of the Bund in Ukraine in 1918 into communists (Kombund) and social democrats (Bund SD).Joshua Meyers, “A Portrait of Transition: From the Bund to Bolshevism in the Russian Revolution,” Jewish Social Studies n.s. 24, no. 2 (Winter 2019): 107–134. Copyright © 2019 The Trustees of Indiana University. doi: 10.2979/jewisocistud.24.2.09Archive of Jewish History, Volume 8, p.p. 156-177 (Rosspen, Moscow, 2016)
Heading the military education in Russia and the Soviet Union In April 1919, David Lipetz moved to Kiev, where he met with Mikhail Frunze.Joshua Meyers, “A Portrait of Transition: From the Bund to Bolshevism in the Russian Revolution,” Jewish Social Studies n.s. 24, no. 2 (Winter 2019): 107–134. Copyright © 2019 The Trustees of Indiana University. doi: 10.2979/jewisocistud.24.2.09. David Lipetz started working in the Red Army. He organized the struggle against antisemitism and lectured in the Red Army. At the end of 1919 David Lipetz joined the Bolsheviks. He was one of the founders and a member of the Governmental Committee for the Fight against Antisemitism in Russia and the Soviet Union. The committee included Semyon Dimanstein, Abram Kheifets, Maxim Gorky and other well-known leaders of the revolutionary movement. At the same time David Lipetz entered into a polemic with Vladimir Lenin about the policy of the Bolsheviks regarding the participation of the Jewish population of Ukraine in the work of the state authorities.Brendan McGeever. Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution. — Cambridge University Press, 2019. — p.p. 247.
From the book of David Petrovsky "Military education in the years of the revolution (1917-1924)": "I was appointed the head of Speakers bureau in the General Directorate of military education (GUVUZ) in fall of 1919. Since the end of 1919 I'm starting to come into contact with the general operational activity of the military educational institutions, first as the head of the political department of GUVUZ (1919 - early 1920), and then as the chief of the General Directorate of military education, from March 1920 to April 1924."
David Lipetz became David Petrovsky, or just General Petrovsky. He was responsible for all Soviet military education from 1920 till 1924. Military education in the Russian Empire was destroyed by the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War. He had a difficult task of rebuilding it during ongoing civil war and unrest, and preparing a young generation in military academies, colleges, and training centers. Some of Petrovsky's ideas were met with resistance, including his idea for the establishment of Soviet military schools for boys. The time for them came only twenty years later, when the Suvorov Military Schools and the Nakhimov Naval Schools were first opened. His point of view on the problems of a single military doctrine caused a sharp controversy between him and Mikhail Frunze.Ster Elisavetskiy. General Petrovsky biography, Institute of Jewish Studies, Kyiv, 2002, the International Solomon University, Ukraine
Yet in 1924 Mikhail Frunze expresses gratitude to him for "the fruitful work done over the matter of raising the military power of the Soviet Union."The Order № 565 of April 15, 1924. The Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Soviet Union M.Frunze, Military Gazette, number 16, 1924, p. 66
Work in the Comintern In 1924, David Petrovsky was sent to work in the Communist International as a Communist International representative in the communist parties of Great Britain, France, and the United States. Petrovsky came to England under the name of Bennett, and everyone - even the British Communists and his future wife Rose Cohen considered him American - a Yankee from the East Coast of the United States. He managed to avoid the British police for five years - a remarkable feat, which no subsequent Comintern representative ever equaled. His influence on the British Communist Party was huge.Francis Beckett: Rose between thorns, The Guardian, United Kingdom, June 24, 2004 Western intelligence agencies didn't manage to declassify him. In France, he was known as Humboldt, and he had passports in other names as well. He led the Anglo-American Secretariat and controlled the communist movements in Great Britain, Ireland, the U.S., India, South Africa, Canada, Japan, Korea and Dutch Indonesia. He was concerned about the situation of black people in the U.S. and South Africa. In 1928, Petrovsky was elected and served as a member of the presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International . "God Goldfarb" - called him old friends in the U.S.Archive of Jewish history, Volume 7, (p.p. 225-241)
Heading the higher and secondary technical education in Russia and the Soviet Union