On the night of October 24-25, 1917, the Provisional Government was arrested at the Winter Palace. These events are known to everyone, thanks to Vladimir Mayakovsky's poetry about them.
«Which ones are temporary here? Get off! Your time is over».
One of the thirteen members of the government who "screamed", according to the proletarian poet, "Surrender! Surrender!", was Pyotr Palchinsky. By the way, he is also the head of the defense of the palace, in which "... every staircase, every ledge was taken, stepping over the junkers."
In fact, as has long been known, there was no "Eisenstein" assault, and members of the Revolutionary Military Council entered through the service entrance from the embankment. And, according to Lenin's description, the future prisoner of Petropavlovsk was not particularly "bourgeois". For example, what the Russian anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin wrote about him:
«I am familiar with Palchinsky's work through the extensive contributions he made to the Russian Manufactory Exhibition in Italy. His conscientious and remarkable efficiency in scientific engineering and economic research is well-known.».
Pyotr Akimovich Palchinsky was born in Vyatka province in the family of a forester in 1875. Then the mother moved the children to Kazan, where the boy graduated from school, after which he tried to enter the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. The first time the attempt failed, so he took up tutoring and self-education. He made acquaintance with a circle of anarchists, whose ideas he obviously shared. The young man became a student a year later, and in 1900 he received the coveted diploma of a mining engineer.
In 1902, a 27-year-old young man became the manager of the Golovinsky coal mines in Cheremkhov, Irkutsk province. A few years later, he became a member of the All-Russian Union of Engineers and the Club of Mining Workers, and later its chairman. At the same time, he edited the humorous magazine Diary of the Latest Secrets. For his work in the Committee of Employees and Workers of the Irkutsk depot and station management, where he was secretary, a criminal case was opened against Palchinsky. The first arrest and escape abroad followed.
1905 London. Peter is one of the organizers of the "A.I. Herzen Russian Circle". In 1911, he took part in the World Industrial Exhibition in Turin, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the unification of Italy and was appointed head of the mining department. Sergey Timashev, Minister of Trade and Industry of Russia, who visited the exhibition in September of the same year, thanked him. At the same time, the mining engineer received a commendation from the Italian Minister of Finance and Trade and was awarded an exhibition diploma and a Diploma of Merit. However, as a criminal defendant in Russia, Palchinsky was forced to refuse to be awarded the Orders of St. Maurice and Lazarus, but accepted a cash prize.
In 1913, he returned to Russia and immediately became a shareholder in a number of industrial companies, a member of the board of the Lysvensky Mining District Joint-stock Company, and a director of the board of the Lyuborad Joint-stock company. Later, he became the organizer of the Produgol syndicate. During the outbreak of the war, Palchinsky joined the work of the Central Military Industrial Committee with his characteristic energy. This organization, located on Liteyny Prospekt, coordinated the work of the country's military-industrial complex and was engaged in the rearmament of the army. By the way, one of her employees and a good friend of Peter Akimovich was the future classic of the avant-garde Marc Chagall.
Immediately after the second revolution, from February 1917, the miner remained a member of the Provisional Government as a comrade Minister of Trade and Industry and assistant to the Minister of War, assistant to the chairman of the military commission of the IV State Duma, chief Commissioner for the supply of metal and fuel, chairman of a Special meeting on the defense of the state. Then he also became a civil assistant to the military Governor-General of Petrograd and its environs. At the time of the Kornilov uprising, he replaced Boris Savinkov as governor of the city, led the creation of defensive structures before a possible German offensive. At the time of the armed uprising, he was the head of the defense of the Winter Palace.
The first part of his life ended with the ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Minister Malyantovich described the arrest of cabinet members:
«At the Troitsky Bridge, the crowd pressed in from all sides, savage faces flashed around, there was a smell of sweat and alcohol, fists and rifles were raised up. They demanded to throw the ministers directly into the Neva River. Screams rang out: "Here they are, our bloodsuckers! They've been pumping our blood! And where is Kerensky, the damned Jew?! Running away? We'll catch him!»
The conditions in the Trubetskoy ravelin were not the best, but Gorky helped a lot. At his request, two patients Kokoshkin and Shingarev were transferred to the Mariinsky Hospital. However, the latter were brutally murdered as a result of lynching. Lenin admitted that he could not guarantee the lives of others. Of course, it "put pressure on the psyche."
However, no matter how passions boiled, at the beginning of 1918, Pyotr Akimovich was released from custody "for lack of evidence of a crime." He was elected to the chairmanship of the Russian Technical Society. Palchinsky organized the Institute of Surface and Subsoil Studies, published a magazine of the same name, wrote books, taught at the Mining Institute, lectured on the economics of resins and gases, participated in the search for oil shale deposits. At the same time, he was arrested several times as a hostage.
The issue of his expulsion abroad was considered. He refused, explaining:
«My place is here. We must preserve and strengthen our economic and cultural heritage. This is the duty of the entire intelligentsia, which has not yet been killed or shot by the Bolsheviks. We must help them, and sincerely, strive with all our might to rebuild the country now that they have decided to end the destruction and move on to positive work.».
At the same time, he advised the builders of the Dnieper and actively participated in the preparation of the GOELRO plan. He was awarded the title of "Hero of Labor" of the RSFSR. With simultaneous issuance of a cut for the suit.
"No matter how tight the rope is." On April 24, 1928, Pyotr Ioakimovich was arrested on charges of participating in the Council of the Union of Engineering Organizations. After spending more than a year in the OGPU's Internal Prison on Lubyanka and in Butyrskaya prison, on May 22, 1929, Palchinsky was sentenced by the OGPU Board to be shot on charges of leading a conspiracy and sabotage in railway transport and in the gold and platinum industry. This is the so-called "Shakhty affair".
However, it was most likely not invented "sabotage" at all that ruined the organizer of Russian and Soviet industry, but that very characteristic of Lenin about his "bourgeoisness". And two strokes – Joseph Stalin was against the shooting, and Vladimir Mayakovsky was definitely in favor:
Listen, come to the factories, in your ears
a terrible word will be imposed — "pest",
The names of the mines will be imposed.
Let the articles be determined by the court.
The culprit would at least be targeted by a shooting gallery…
Contempt and hatred carry meunder the roofs of engineering apartments.
In 2000, Pyotr Akimovich Palchinsky was rehabilitated.
And yet – Alexander Solzhenitsyn will write the final truth about the Russian engineer in the GULAG Archipelago:
«He was an engineering scientist with an amazing breadth of interests. A graduate of the Mining Institute, an outstanding miner, as we can see from the list of his works, he studied and left works on general issues of economic development, fluctuations in industrial prices, coal exports, equipment and operation of commercial ports in Europe, economic problems of the port economy, safety in Germany, concentration in the German and about the British mining industry, about the mining economy, about the restoration and development of the building materials industry in the USSR, about the general training of engineers in higher schools — and moreover, the work on mining proper, the description of individual areas and individual deposits».