Semyon Dukelsky

Semyon Dukelsky was born in Yelizavetgrad, in Kherson province, Ukraine, the son of a minor official. He worked as a pianist in cinemas in various cities, before being drafted into the Russian Imperial army in 1915. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, after the February Revolution, and in 1918, worked in the administrative of the newly created Red Army, under Leon Trotsky, until Trotsky's deputy, Ephraim Sklyansky complained "I don't need such an assistant".[1] He was transferred to Cheka in southern Ukraine.

As head of the Cheka in Crimea, in 1920, Dukelsky was a party to one of the most infamous atrocities of the Russian Civil War, when thousands of officers, who had been persuaded to surrender under an amnesty after the final battle were massacred. The order to kill them was signed by Bela Kun, Rosalia Zemlyachka, and Dukelsky.[1] In 1921, Dukelsky was appointed head of Cheka in Odessa.[2]

In 1926–30, he was head of the food industry in Odessa. In June 1930, he was posted to Voronezh as deputy head of the Ogpu for the Central Black Earth Region. He held the equivalent post in the Belorussian SSR (Belarus) in 1930–31. In 1932–37, he was head of the Ogpu in the Central Black Earth Region, and, from July 1934, head of the Voronezh region NKVD.[3]

As the regional chief of police in Voronezh, Dukelsky was responsible for supervising the poet, Osip Mandelstam, who was exiled there in 1934–37. There is a story that when Mandelstam was desperate for someone to hear his poems, he would ring Dukelsky and recite them to him.[4]

On 13 July 1936, Dukelsky complained to Nikolai Yezhov, the party secretary with oversight over the NKVD, that the investigation of alleged Trotskyist conspirators, which had speeded up at the start of 1935, after the assassination of Sergei Kirov had slowed down. On 11 September, he sent Yezhov another note, alleging that the NKVD had been informed early in 1933 of the existence of a secret Trotskyist centre but had not acted on the information. Yezhov passed note onto Stalin. The head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, reacted by sacking Dukelsky, but that same month, Yagoda was sacked, partly on the strength of Dukelsky's denunciation, and Dukelsky was reinstated.[5]

In summer 1937, Dukelsky suffered a serious car accident, which meant that he was hospitalised at the time when Yezhov was conducting purge during which thousands of NKVD officers were arrested and executed. The accident possibly saved Dukelsky's life.[1]

Dukelsky was appointed head of the Committee for Cinema Affairs on 23 March 1938, following the arrest of the previous head, Boris Shumyatsky. Soon after his appointment, he issued a decree that led to the dismissals and legal action against employees who had been late for work, absent, or were drunk during working hours. He introduced a system of military discipline to monitor the staff of film studios, cinemas etc. He also ordered the cancellation of films not relevant to contemporary themes.

Among others, he banned what would have been a film version of one of the most popular short stories in Russian literature, The Queen of Spades, by Pushkin, directed by Mikhail Romm, with music by Sergei Prokofiev. It was originally scheduled to come out in 1937, to mark the centenary of Pushkin's birth, but was delayed by the arrests that swept through the cinema industry that year. About 70,000 roubles had been spent on the production when Dukalsky called Romm in to tell him that it was to be scrapped, When Romm objected, Dukelsky told him:

"I don't understand you! Why are you always grieving The Queen of Spades - and thinking about three cards, three cards, three cards. If I were in your shoes, I'd be happy. What don't you have? Money? You have it! Fame? You have it! Your films are even shown abroad. You have an apartment! What else do you need?"[6]

According to the historian, Jamie Miller, Dukelsky's "dogmatic demands that films made in 1938 should reflect themes of 'modernity' ... (and) his misguided attempts to defend and foster the dissemination of films favourable to contemporary party-sponsored issues had an extremely negative impact." During 1938, just 38 films were made.[7]

But, unlike his predecessor, Dukelsky allowed Sergei Eisenstein to direct a film - Alexander Nevsky, considered by many to be the finest film made in the USSR in the 1930s.

In January 1939, Dukelsky ended the system under which film directors were paid a proportion of ticket sales, decreeing that directors and cameras would be paid according to how the authorities rated the quality of their work.[7]

Mikhail Room described Dukelsky as "a strange man, somehow quite extraordinary ... tall, bony, in blue breeches and boots, in a blue tunic, his shoulders are so sharp. The body turns with the head. The mouth, when it smiles, bends. Brit bald. The head is like an egg - large, long. The ears stick out and the glasses are dark. Looks like Pobedonostsev; long neck with an Adam's apple. And the head tosses and turns with the body. The first impression is rather ominous." On further acquaintance, Romm decided that he was "an idiot, a son of a bitch ... a cretin, a dog." [8]

On April 9, 1939, Dukelsky was appointed USSR People's Commissar for the Merchant Fleet, succeeding his former boss, Yezhov, who was arrested the following day.[9] According to Romm, one of his first acts was to ban sailors from disembarking in any foreign port.[8] He was removed from his post as head of the cinema industry "at his own request" on 4 June 1939.[7] In 1942, several months after the German invasion, he was demoted, and put in charge of ammunition stores in the Chelyabinsk region. In 1943–1948, he was Deputy People's Commissar for Justice for the RSFSR. He retired on a pension in 1948, and settled in Moscow, where he died.[10]