Wednesday, 02 April 2025

Lev Kamenev

Lev Borisovich Kamenev (Russian: Лев Бори́сович Ка́менев, IPA: [ˈlʲɛf bɐˈrʲisəvʲɪtɕ ˈkamʲɪnʲɪf]; 18 July [O.S. 6 July] 1883 – 25 August 1936), born Rozenfeld (Russian: Ро́зенфельд), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution: Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov.

Kamenev was the brother-in-law of Leon Trotsky. He served briefly as the equivalent of the first head of state of Soviet Russia in 1917, and from 1923-24 as acting Premier in the last year of Vladimir Lenin's life. Joseph Stalin viewed him as a source of discontent and a source of opposition to his own leadership; Kamenev fell out of favour and was executed on 25 August 1936, aged 53, after a brief show trial.

Early life and career

Kamenev was born in Moscow, the son of a Jewish railway worker and a Russian Orthodox mother. The wealth that his father had acquired in the building of the Baku-Batumi railway was used to fund a good education for Lev. He went to the boys' Gymnasium in Tiflis, Georgia (now Tbilisi) and attended Moscow University, but his education was interrupted by an arrest in 1902. From that point on, he was a professional revolutionary, working in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Tiflis. Kamenev married a fellow Marxist (and Leon Trotsky's sister), Olga Kameneva, in the early 1900s and the couple had two sons.