Grigory Kaminsky

Grigory Naumovich Kaminsky (, ; 1 November 1895 – 10 February 1938) was a Soviet politician who was the 2nd First Secretary of Azerbaijan Communist Party, and one of the founders of the health care system in the Soviet Union.

Early life Kaminsky was born in the family of a Jewish blacksmith in Ekaterinoslav, Ukraine. He became involved in the revolutionary movement as a 16 year old pupil in a Gymnasium in Minsk, in Belarus, distributing Pravda to factory workers. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1913. In 1915, he entered the Lomonosov Moscow State University, to study medicine.

Political career In 1917, while still a student, Kaminsky became a member of Moscow bureau of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and had to break off his studies in March when the party sent him to Tula, where Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were united in a single party organisation, but which split after Vladimir Lenin's return to Russia. In May, Kaminsky was elected secretary of the Tula Bolsheviks. In July 1918, he launched Kommunar, Tula's first legally published Bolshevik newspaper. During the Russian Civil War, he was also chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee, and a political commissar with the 2nd army. Late in 1920, Kaminsky was sent to Azerbaijan, soon after it had been reoccupied by the Red Army. Aged only 25, he was First Secretary of Azerbaijan Communist Party, chairman of the Baku Commune and Red Army deputies. He was recalled to Moscow in 1921, and replaced by Sergei Kirov. His policy was vehemently opposed by Leon Trotsky, leader of the Left Opposition, who claimed, in July 1926, that it would lead to the co-operatives being run not by communists and poor peasants but by 'middle' peasants.

In 1928, after Stalin had decided to drive peasants onto collective farms, Kaminsky was appointed head of Kolkhozsentr, the main farm agency for the Russian republic. In this role, he was an enthusiast advocate of the rapid formation of large collective farms, equipped with tractors and other machinery, which he believed would be the route out of poverty for peasants struggling to subsist on small landholdings. In contrast to his earlier views, he argued that kulaks should be barred from joining kolkhozes, and should be repressed. During an agricultural conference in January 1930, he urged delegates not to fear going too far in the drive for collectivisation, because it was a "revolutionary cause".

Party official Late in 1929, Kaminsky was appointed head of the Central Committee department for agitation and mass campaigns. From 1930 until his arrest, he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee. In 1930, he was appointed the Secretary of Moscow State Committee of the Communist Party, rising to the rank of Second Secretary.

Commissar for Health Kaminsky served as the for the Russian Federal Republic from 15 February 1934. In August, he was given the additional title of USSR Chief Sanitory Inspector. In July 1936, he was appointed the first USSR People's Commissar for Health. Kaminsky also protested against the practice of suppressing information about epidemics. This may have prompted him to take a stand against the spread of the Great Terror.

The speech that Kaminsky reputedly delivered during a plenary session of the Central Committee of June 1937 was not included in the report, and is known only from hearsay. The historian Robert Conquest was told by an unnamed source that he spoke "with particular effect and firmness, presenting a full but calm indictment of Yezhov (head of the NKVD) and his methods." He is reputed to have told Stalin: "The NKVD is still arresting honest people." To which Stalin retorted: "They are enemies of the people, and you are a bird of the same feather." He is also credited with denouncing the future NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria, then the party boss in Transcaucasia, mentioning that Beria had worked for the counterintelligence of the Musavat party in Azerbaijan. Nikita Khrushchev corrobated this in his memoirs.

Kaminsky was arrested that same day, 25 June 1937. He told the arresting officers: "Comrades, it's provocation!". He was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad the same day.

Kaminsky was posthumously 'rehabilitated' in March 1955.