Christian Georgiyevich Rakovsky (August 13 [O.S. August 1] 1873 – September 11, 1941), Bulgarian name Krastyo Georgiev Rakovski, born Krastyo Georgiev Stanchov, was a Bulgarian-born socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat and statesman; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist. Rakovsky's political career took him throughout the Balkans and into France and Imperial Russia; for part of his life, he was also a Romanian citizen.
A lifelong collaborator of Leon Trotsky, he was a prominent activist of the Second International, involved in politics with the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party, Romanian Social Democratic Party, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Rakovsky was expelled at different times from various countries as a result of his activities, and, during World War I, became a founding member of the Revolutionary Balkan Social Democratic Labor Federation while helping to organize the Zimmerwald Conference. Imprisoned by Romanian authorities, he made his way to Russia, where he joined the Bolshevik Party after the October Revolution, and unsuccessfully attempted to generate a communist revolution in the Kingdom of Romania. Subsequently, he was a founding member of the Comintern, served as head of government in the Ukrainian SSR, and took part in negotiations at the Genoa Conference.
He came to oppose Joseph Stalin and rallied with the Left Opposition, being marginalized inside the government and sent as Soviet ambassador to London and Paris, where he was involved in renegotiating financial settlements. He was ultimately recalled from France in autumn 1927, after signing his name to a controversial Trotskyist platform which endorsed world revolution. Credited with having developed the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism as "bureaucratic centrism", Rakovsky was subject to internal exile. Submitting to Stalin's leadership in 1934 and being briefly reinstated, he was nonetheless implicated in the Trial of the Twenty One (part of the Moscow Trials), imprisoned, and executed by the NKVD during World War II. He was rehabilitated in 1988, during the Soviet Glasnost period.
Rakovsky's original Bulgarian name was Krastyo Georgiev Stanchev (Кръстьо Георгиев Станчев), which he himself changed to Krastyo Rakovski (Кръстьо Раковски), being a grandnephew of the Bulgarian national hero Georgi Rakovski. The usual form his first name took in Romanian was Cristian (occasionally rendered as Christian), while his last name was spelled Racovski, Racovschi, or Rakovski. His given name was occasionally rendered as Ristache, an antiquated hypocoristic—he was known as such to his acquaintance, writer Ion Luca Caragiale.
In Russian, his full name, including patronymic, was Khristian Georgievich Rakovsky (Христиан Георгиевич Раковский). Christian (as well as Cristian and Kristian) is an approximate rendition of Krastyo (the Bulgarian for "cross"), as used by Rakovsky himself. In Ukrainian, Rakovsky's name is rendered as Християн Георгійович Раковський, and usually transliterated as Khrystyian Heorhiiovych Rakovskyi.
During his lifetime, he was also known under the pseudonyms H. Insarov and Grigoriev, which he used in signing several articles for the Russian-language press.
Christian Rakovsky was born to a wealthy Bulgarian family in Gradets — near Kotel — at the time still part of Ottoman-ruled Rumelia. He was, on his mother's side, the grandnephew of Georgi Sava Rakovski, a revolutionary hero of the Bulgarian National Revival; that side of his family also included Georgi Mamarchev, who had fought against the Ottomans in the Imperial Russian Army. Rakovsky's father was a merchant who belonged to the Democratic Party.
He later stated that, as early as his childhood years, he had felt a special admiration towards Russia, and that he had been impressed by witnessing, at age 5, the Russo-Turkish War and Russian presence (he claimed to have met General Eduard Totleben during the conflict).
Although his parents moved to the Kingdom of Romania in 1880, settling in Gherengic (Northern Dobruja), he completed his education in newly emancipated Bulgaria. Rakovsky was expelled from the gymnasium in Gabrovo for his political activities (in 1887 and then again, after organizing a riot, in 1890). It was around that time that he became a Marxist, and began collaborating with the socialist journalist Evtim Dabev, whom he aided in printing works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (at the time, Rakovsky and Sava Balabanov published their own newspaper, the clandestine Zerkalo).
Since, after having ultimately been banned from attending any public school in the country, he could not complete his education in Bulgaria, in September 1890, Rakovsky went to Geneva to begin his studies and become a physician. While in Switzerland, he joined the Socialist Student Circle at the University of Geneva, which was largely composed of non-Swiss youth.
A polyglot, Rakovsky became close to Georgy Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, and his circle, eventually writing a number of articles and a book in Russian. He briefly worked with Rosa Luxemburg, Pavel Axelrod, and Vera Zasulich. Unable to attend the First International Congress of Socialist Students in Brussels (1892), he became involved in organizing the Second Congress, held in Geneva during the fall of 1893.
He was a founding editor of the Geneva-based Bulgarian-language magazine Sotsial-Demokrat and later a major contributor to the Bulgarian Marxist publications Den', Rabotnik, and Drugar. At the time, Rakovsky and Balabanov, with Plekhanov's encouragement, stressed the importance for moderation in socialist policies—Sotsial-Demokrat rallied with the Bulgarian Social Democratic Union and rejected the more radical Bulgarian Social Democratic Party. He soon became involved in distributing socialist propaganda inside Bulgaria, at a time when Stefan Stambolov organized a crackdown on political opposition.
Later in 1893, Rakovsky enrolled in a medical school in Berlin, contributing articles for Vorwärts and becoming close to Wilhelm Liebknecht (the two corresponded regularly for the rest of Liebknecht's life). As a Bulgarian delegate to the Second International Congress in Zürich, he also met with Engels and Jules Guesde.
Six months later, he was arrested and expelled from the German Empire for maintaining close contacts with the Russian revolutionaries there. He finished his education in 1894–1896 in Zürich, Nancy and Montpellier, where he wrote for La Jeunesse Socialiste and La Petite République, maintaining a friendship with Guesde and becoming an opponent of Jean Jaurès' reformist views.
According to his own testimony, he became active in supporting the Anti-Ottoman upsurge in Crete and Macedonia, as well as Dashnak revolutionary activities. In 1896, he was the Bulgarian representative to the Second International's London Congress (part of his speech was published in Karl Kautsky's Die Neue Zeit).
Military service and first stay in Russia
Although actively involved in many European countries' socialist movements, prior to 1917 Rakovsky's focus remained on the Balkans and especially on his native country and Romania; his activities in support of the international socialist movement led to his expulsion, at different times, from Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, France and Russia.
In 1897, he published Russiya na Istok (Russia in the East), a book sharply critical of the Russian Empire's foreign policy, which, according to Rakovsky, followed one of Georgy Plekhanov's guidelines ("Tsarist Russia must be isolated in its foreign relations"). On several occasions, he publicly criticized Russia's policies towards Romania and in Bessarabia (describing Russia's rule over the latter as "absolutist conquest", "mischievous action", and "abduction"). According to Rakovsky, "Russophile papers" in Bulgaria had begun to target him as a consequence.