Early life edit

Fyodor Raskolnikov was born to a general's daughter, A. V. Ilyina, and an Orthodox priest F.A. Petrov^[2] (according to other sources, archpriest Sergushenkov^[1]). Alternatively, "... his father was Fedor Ilyin, a progressive St. Petersburg churchman, a widower who could not legally remarry and whose sons were therefore technically illegitimate. The Ilyin family life was fairly normal ..."^[3] He graduated from Prince Oldenburgsky Orphanage,^[2] studied at Saint Petersburg Polytechnical Institute, and then at the Midshipman (gardemarin) School in Saint Petersburg.^[1]

In December 1910 he joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and he was attracted to Zvezda and went on to work for the Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda. He was arrested, and allowed to emigrate, but after running into trouble with the German police, he returned illegally to Russia, and was again arrested and exiled to Arkhangelsk, but released in 1913 under the amnesty called to mark the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.^[4] He enlisted in the navy on the outbreak of war, and in 1917 he received the Naval rank of Midshipman (michman), but he did not participate in World War I.^[1]

In March 1917 he was sent to the sea fortress of Kronstadt, where he edited the newspaper Golos Pravdy (Voice of Truth): an incarnation of the forbidden at that time Pravda newspaper.^[1] He was one of the organizers of the Kronstadt Mutiny in July 1917. He was arrested by troops loyal to the Russian Provisional Government but released on October 11, 1917, a few weeks before the October Revolution.^[1]

Civil War edit

In November 1917 Raskolnikov with a group of Kronstadt seamen was sent to fight anti-Bolshevik insurgents in Moscow. He was elected to the Russian Constituent Assembly. On 29 January 1918 he became the deputy Narkom of "Naval Affairs".^[1] In summer 1918, he married Larisa Reisner.^[5] In July 1918, he was sent to Kazan, as the Commissar (member of Revvoeyensovet) of the Eastern Front. On the Eastern Front, he commanded (since August 1918) the Red Volga Flotilla, which participated in the Kazan Operation.^[6]

Raskolnikov was promoted to membership of the Revvoeyensovet of RSFSR on September 2, 1918. At the end of 1918 he became the deputy commander of the 7th Army and the Commissar of the Baltic Fleet.^[1]

While commanding a fleet consisting of a battleship, cruiser and two destroyers that were supposed to counter the British fleet, he became a prisoner of war when his destroyer Spartak was captured by the Royal Navy^[1] off the coast of Estonia in December 1918, and held in Brixton prison until May 27, 1919, when he was exchanged for 17 British prisoners of war. Appointed commander of the Caspian Flotilla^[1] he led the assault on the British base at Enzeli, on May 18, 1920^[7] which destroyed what remained of the White Russian navy and British garrison stationed there, and established the short lived Iranian Socialist Soviet Republic, in northern Iran.

Soviet service edit

In August 1920, Raskolnikov wrote a report warning that the shipbuilding facilities in Petrograd had been so badly depleted of technical specialists during the civil war that they were not capable even of repairing damaged ships, and called for recruitment drive, a wage system based on piece work, and an end to 'interference' by the Metal Workers' Union. ^[8] During the Trade Union debate (1920) Raskolnikov supported Leon Trotsky in taking a hard line about control of the unions. In June 1920 – January 1921 Raskolnikov commanded the Baltic Fleet. During his tenure relations between the commanding officers and seamen deteriorated and ended with the Kronstadt Rebellion. A month later Raskolnikov was removed from that command.^[1]

During 1921–1923 Raskolnikov was the ambassador to Afghanistan (the first country that established diplomatic relations with the Russian Soviet Republic^[9]). Raskolnikov's actions caused a diplomatic rift with Great Britain, and the British government insisted on his removal. Eventually he was replaced.^[1]

His marriage to Larissa Reissner ended after their return from Afghanistan.

In 1924–30, Raskolnikov worked in literature as editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard), that was an organ of the Komsomol, and head of the publishing house publishing house Moskovsky Rabochy ^[10]

He arrived at a time of an angry controversy within the communist party over whether Soviet journals should be publishing by writers from comfortable family backgrounds who sympathised with the revolution – the so-called 'fellow travelers' – or concentrating exclusively on developing 'proletarian literature'. When the press department of the Central Committee organised a debate between the two sides, in May 1924, Raskolnikov gave a speech which Leon Trotsky praised as "the most distinctive expression" of the 'proletarian' side of the argument, which Trotsky opposed.^[11]

In June 1924, the Central Committee appointed him an editor of Krasnaya Nov, which had specialised in publishing the works of fellow travelers, under its incumbent chief editor, Aleksandr Voronsky. He delayed taking up the appointment because he had contracted tuberculosis, and went to Italy for a sun cure. After his return, Krasnaya Nov was filled with articles by advocates of proletarian literature, such Ilya Vardin, whom Voronsky had refused to publish. But Raskolnikov was ousted from the magazine early in 1925, possibly because Maxim Gorky had angrily refused to contribute while he was in charge. He was reinstated in May 1927.^[12]

In 1928 he was the chairman of the Repertory Committee, the de facto main censor of theatre and cinematography. He also wrote his own play Robespierre which even servile critics labelled "dry and boring".^[1]

From 1930 Raskolnikov was the plenipotentiary representative to Estonia 1930–33, and Denmark 1933–34. When diplomatic relations with Bulgaria were re-established in August 1934, after they had been severed since the Russian Revolution, Raskolnikov was appointed head of the diplomatic mission in Sofia.

In March 1938 he was recalled from Sofia to the USSR, but on April 1 refused to return. He moved with his family in France. In 1939 he published his famous Open Letter to Stalin^[13] in which he criticized Stalin's repressions during the Great Terror and the emerging German-Soviet alliance.

Not long after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Raskolnikov was admitted to a mental hospital because the signing of the pact was a severe shock to him. He promptly died from "falling out of a window" while staying in the hospital. According to the writer Nina Berberova, Raskolnikov committed suicide. This account was contested by Raskolnikov's wife at the time, who claimed her husband died of pneumonia.^[14]

According to the historian Roy Medvedev, Raskolnikov might have been assassinated by NKVD agents. There are theories that the assassin might have been Sergei Efron, the husband of the poet Marina Tsvetayeva.^[2]

Raskolnikov was posthumously rehabilitated in 1963.^[1] However, "Around the end of the decade his photographs disappeared from reference books, and editors mentioning him favourably were reprimanded or dismissed. Finally, in February 1969 the Party organ, Kommunist, categorised him as 'a deserter to the side of the enemy and a slanderer of the Party and the Soviet state'."^[15] His reputation would be restored during the Glasnost period, with the publication of his Open Letter to Stalin in the Soviet press.^[16]

• Kazan Operation
• Death barge

• Tales of Sub-Lieutenant Ilyin
• Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917: the memoirs of Fyodor Raskolnikov
• Newspaper clippings about Fyodor Raskolnikov in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW