Ivan Danishevsky: security officer, aircraft manufacturer, publicist

The article, which is mainly based onarchival documents, is the first attempt to compile a biography of an outstanding person in Soviet history - Ivan MikhailovichDanishevsky. The Party profile and 1938 Novosibirsk NKVD investigation profile on Danishevsky, his own memoirs and works allowyou to see a portrait of a man whose life was marked by active participation in the tumultuous events of the 20th century. Coming froma middle-class Jewish family, he was born in Warsaw in 1897 and received a secondary education. Danishevsky revolutionary activitiesbegan in 1916 in the Ukraine in the Socialist Revolutionary Party; he was in the Red Guard in Kharkiv, fought with the white troops. Inthe middle of the Civil War, he was quickly promoted to major posts in the Soviet political police and joined the Bolshevik Party.Danishevsky was a prominent figure in the military counter-intelligence service in the central office of the Cheka (the All-RussianExtraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Speculation, and Sabotage), head of the special department of the Chekaof the 13th Army, the organizer of the merciless Red Terror in the Crimea and the Caucasus. In late 1920 - early 1921 Danishevskyheaded a special Cheka three in the Crimea and shot at least 2000 people, white officers and refugees, without trial. In 1921Danishevsky transferred to the economic department. In the 1920s he worked in the handicraft industry, banking system and foreigntrade. In 1930 the CPSU sent Danishevsky to train at the Air Force Academy. With a degree in engine building, Danishevsky worked inthe Urals and Novosibirsk till 1938, having become a prominent organizer of the aviation industry. In 1937-1938 Danishevsky headed alarge aircraft plant in Novosibirsk. But in the climate of political repression Danishevsky was accused of sabotage and sentenced to 20years in prison. He was sent to the concentration camps of Kolyma, where he stayed for 14 years. In 1955 Danishevsky was rehabilitatedand returned to Moscow and until his death was actively engaged in literary work. He wrote memoirs and collections of memoirs of theheroic pages of Soviet history. It must be admitted that his letters to government authorities show him as a man of extremely dogmaticbeliefs. But people who knew Danishevsky draw a portrait of an attractive person, always ready to help others. Danishevsky died in thesecond half of 1970 in Moscow and was quickly forgotten. A typical old Bolshevik, Danishevsky lived a life of a man, convinced in thecorrectness of the ideas he believed in. In his eventful biography there still are many unknowns pages.

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