Arkady Rosengolts

Arkady Pavlovich Rosengolts (Russian: Арка́дий Па́влович Розенго́льц; 4 November 1889 – 15 March 1938; sometimes spelled Rosengoltz or Rosenholz) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet military leader, politician and diplomat.

From the beginning of the Russian civil war, Rosengolts was a political commissar with the Red Army, and played a leading role in the conquest of Kazan the Volga region during 1918.

[7] This invoked a sarcastic response from Joseph Stalin, writing in Pravda in December 1923: "In the ranks of the opposition there are men like Rosengolts, whose 'democracy' was a misery to our water transport workers and railwaymen.

[10] On 12 May 1927, Special Branch police raided the London headquarters of the Soviet trade delegation and the All-Russian Co-operative Society, 'Arcos' looking for a document allegedly stolen from the War Office.

Rosengolts protested to the British government, and submitted a seven-page memorandum claiming that there was "no particle of evidence that the Trade delegation or Arcos or any of their employees have ever engaged in military espionage.

"[11] But on 24 May, the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin told the UK Parliament that the police had uncovered a wealth of documents obtained by spies in a 'subterranean photostat room'.

[13] Speaking in Parliament two days later, the Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks alleged that Rosengolts "knew perfectly well that there were incriminating documents passing to and fro between Moscow and London.

Under pressure to improve the USSR's trade balance, he clashed fiercely with the People's Commissar for Heavy Industry, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who needed imported equipment.

"[18] On 14 June 1937, early in the Great Purge, Rosengolts was dismissed from this office, and appointed head of the department for state reserves, while the NKVD was building a case against him.

Rosengolts was also accused of having passed military secrets to Germany, on Trotsky's orders, during the negotiations he conducted in 1923, and of embezzling huge sums to finance the opposition.

Alexander Barmine, an employee of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade, described Rosengolts as "a bulky-shouldered, handsome Jew, with a heavy jaw and iron character ...