{{Short description|Soviet politician (1888–1938)}} {{Infobox officeholder | name = Georgy Oppokov | image = Georgy Oppokov.jpg | image_size = | caption = Oppokov in 1934 | birth_date = 5 February 1888 | birth_place = Saratov, [[Russian Empire]] | death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1937|09|02|1888|2|5}} | death_place = [[Moscow]], [[Soviet Union]] | occupation = Economist | order = [[People's Commissariat of Justice of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|People's Commissar for Justice<br />of the Russian SFSR]] | term_start = 8 November 1918 | term_end = 29 November 1918 | premier = [[Vladimir Lenin]] | predecessor = ''Office established'' | successor = [[Pēteris Stučka]] | party = [[Russian Social Democratic Labor Party|RSDLP]] ([[Bolsheviks]]) {{nowrap|(1903–1918)}} <br />[[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Russian Communist Party]] (1918–1937) | spouse = | relations = | native_name = {{nobold|Георгий Оппоков}} }} '''Georgy Ippolitovich Oppokov''' ({{langx|ru|Гео́ргий Ипполи́тович Оппо́ков}}; also known as '''Afanasi Lomov'''; 28 January 1888 – 2 September 1937) was a prominent [[Bolshevik]] leader, [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] politician and the first [[People's Commissariat for Justice|People's Commissar for Justice]] of Soviet Russia.
== Early career == Georgi Oppokov was born in [[Saratov]], the son of a bank manager and member of the minor [[Russian nobility|nobility]].<ref name="Khronos">{{cite web |editor-last1=Rumyantsev |editor-first1=Vyacheslav |title=Ломов (Оппоков) Георгий Ипполитович 1888–1937 Биолграфический указатель |url=http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/bio_l/lomov_oppokov.php |website=Khronos |access-date=9 May 2021}}</ref> He joined the [[Bolsheviks]] as a schoolboy, in 1903, and led a combat squad in Saratov during the [[1905 revolution]]. In 1907–08, he was a member of the Moscow committee of the [[Russian Social Democratic Labour Party]]. Arrested in July 1910, he was exiled to the [[Arkhangelsk Oblast|Arkhangelsk]] region for three years. Released in February 1913, under an amnesty to mark the tricentenary of the [[House of Romanov|Romanov dynasty]],<ref name="Khronos" /> he returned to Moscow, and was one of the founders of the metal workers' union. He was expelled from Moscow in 1914, and returned to Saratov, where he was arrested in April 1916, and deported to Irkutsk.
== Post-revolutionary Career == After the [[February Revolution]], in 1917, Oppokov returned to Moscow, and under the name 'Lomov' was elected a candidate member of the [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Central Committee]] of the Bolsheviks at the [[6th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)|Sixth Party Congress]] in August 1917. As one of its youngest members, he was a keen backer of [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s call for a second revolution. On October 3, speaking on behalf of the Moscow Regional Party Committee, while Lenin was in hiding, he delivered a sharp rebuke to fellow members of the Central Committee for wavering on this issue.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=History of the Russian Revolution, volume 3 |date=1967 |publisher=Sphere |location=London |page=139}}</ref> After the [[Bolshevik Revolution]] in November 1917, he was appointed People's Commissar for Justice, but surrendered this post when the Bolsheviks entered into a brief coalition with the [[Left Socialist Revolutionaries]]. He was also a Bolshevik candidate in the [[1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election]], being fielded in the [[Arkhangelsk electoral district (Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917)|Arkhangelsk constituency]].<ref name="Поповамузей2006">{{cite book|author1=Людмила Дмитриевна Попова|author2=Архангельский областной краеведческий музей|title=Мезень и Мезенский край в истории Отечества и Баренцева региона: сборник статей международной научно-практической конференции, Мезень, 7–9 февраля 2006 года|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RV4MAQAAMAAJ|year=2006|publisher=ОАО ИПП "Правда Севера"|page=56|isbn=978-5-85879-355-7 }}</ref> In December he was appointed a member of the [[Supreme Soviet of the National Economy|Supreme Economic Council (Vesenkha).]]
From January 1918, Lomov was a supporter of the [[Left Communists (Soviet Russia)|Left Communists]], led by [[Nikolai Bukharin]], who opposed the [[Brest-Litovsk Treaty]], proposing instead to fight a 'revolutionary war' against Germany. On 23 February, along with Bukharin and others, he resigned from all his posts to campaign against the treaty, but his resignation was not accepted, and in March, he was re-elected a candidate member of the Central Committee.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Schapiro |first1=Leonard |title=The Origin of the Communist Autocracy, Political Opposition in the Soviet State: First Phase, 1917–1922 |date=1965 |publisher=Frederick A. Praeger |location=New York |pages=101–108}}</ref> In March 1918 he was ousted from his leading position in Vesenkha,<ref>[http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/1917.html Bolsheviks and Workers' Control] by [[Maurice Brinton]]</ref> but was later placed in charge of its timber administration, and was responsible for timber supplies throughout the [[Russian Civil War]]. In 1921–23, he was based in Siberia, as a member of the economic council. In 1923, he was appointed head of the Oil Syndicate.<ref name="Khronos" />
Abandoning his former allegiance to the left, he supported [[Joseph Stalin]] against [[Leon Trotsky]] in the rift that followed Lenin's death, and having been dropped from the Central Committee, he was returned as a full member in December 1927. In 1931–34, he was deputy head of [[Gosplan]]. In February 1934, he was appointed a member of the bureau of the [[Central Control Commission of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Central Control Commission]].{{Citation needed|date=January 2022}}
== Arrest and Death == In June 1937, one of Lomov's colleagues in Gosplan wrote to Stalin denouncing Lomov as someone who had been friendly with Bukharin. Stalin forwarded the note to [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] asking "What to do?". Molotov responded: "I'm for arresting this bastard Lomov immediately."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Conquest |first1=Robert |title=The Great Terror |date=1971 |publisher=Penguin |location=Harmondswoth, Middlesex |page=357}}</ref> He was arrested on 25 June, and shot on 2 September 1937.
== Family == Lomov's wife, Natalya, was arrested on 17 July 1937 and sentenced to eight years in a labour camp for not reporting her husband's 'criminal activities'. She was released early, in 1940, but rearrested in 1941 and sentenced to 10 years in the labour camps, then arrested for the third time in 1949. She was 'rehabilitated' in December 1954.<ref>{{cite web |title=Ломова-Оппокова Наталия Григорьевна (1891) |url=https://ru.openlist.wiki/%D0%9B%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0-%D0%9E%D0%BF%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0_%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%93%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%8C%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0_(1891) |website=Открытый список (Open List) |access-date=31 March 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Ломов-Оппоков Георгий Ипполитович (псевд. Андрей Ломов) (1888–1937) партийный и государственный деятель {Lomov-Oppokov Georgy Ippolitovich (pseud. Andrey Lomov) (1888–1937) party representative and statesman} |url=https://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/?t=author&i=1789 |website=Воспоминания о Гулаге и их авторы |publisher=Sakharov Centre |access-date=10 May 2021}}</ref> Their daughter, Nina, a student at the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages was arrested at the age of 20, in June 1939, and sentenced to three years in a labour camp.<ref>{{cite web |title=Оппокова-Ломова Нина Георгиевна (1919) |url=https://ru.openlist.wiki/%D0%9E%D0%BF%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0-%D0%9B%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0_%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%93%D0%B5%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0_(1919) |website=Открытый список (Open List) |access-date=31 March 2022}}</ref>
== Personality == [[File:The Soviet Union 1988 CPA 5914 stamp (Birth centenary of Georgy Ippolitovich Lomov-Oppokov, Communist party official).jpg|thumb|Soviet 1988 stamp with an image of Oppokov celebrating his 100th birthday]] Simon Liberman, a [[Menshevik]] who worked for the timber trust described Lomov as "an honest, direct man with old-fashioned ideas about the comradeship of the revolutionary circles and about the morals of the revolution itself" adding:
{{blockquote|He looked every inch a nihilist out of [[Ivan Turgenev|Turgenev's]] pages. He was an idealist, and with fire and passion he would argue in defence of any theory that was questioned by anyone in sight. He was tall; his features were fine; his forehead was high beneath his unruly hair. His gestures and movements were clumsy, possibly because of his natural shyness.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Liberman |first1=Simon |title=Building Lenin's Russia |publisher=Chicago U.P. |location=Chicago |pages=172–3}}</ref>|}}
Lomov/Oppokov was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956. The circumstances of his arrest were revealed by the former head of the [[KGB]], [[Alexander Shelepin]], in his speech to the [[22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|22nd Congress]] in 1961.
==Notes== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [https://www.marxists.org/archive/oppokov/index.htm Georgy Oppokov Archive] at [[marxists.org]]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Oppokov, Georgy Ippolitovich}} [[Category:1888 births]] [[Category:1937 deaths]] [[Category:Politicians from Saratov]] [[Category:People from Saratovsky Uyezd]] [[Category:Nobility from the Russian Empire]] [[Category:Old Bolsheviks]] [[Category:Candidates of the Central Committee of the 6th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)]] [[Category:Candidates of the Central Committee of the 7th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]] [[Category:Candidates of the Central Committee of the 14th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]] [[Category:Members of the Central Committee of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]] [[Category:Members of the Central Committee of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]] [[Category:People's commissars and ministers of the Soviet Union]] [[Category:Russian Constituent Assembly members]] [[Category:Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union members]] [[Category:Left communists]] [[Category:Members of the Left Opposition]] [[Category:Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Soviet Union) members]] [[Category:Great Purge victims from Russia]] [[Category:Soviet rehabilitations]] [[Category:Ministers of justice of the Soviet Union]]