Boris Bazhanov was granted French citizenship and survived subsequent Soviet assassination attempts, writing and publishing memoirs and books from 1930 about Stalin and the secrets behind the Stalin regime.
18 Facts About Boris Bazhanov
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Boris Georgiyevich Bazhanov was born on 9 August 1900, in Mogilev-Podolskiy, Russian Empire.
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Boris Bazhanov was 16 years old upon the beginning of the Russian Revolution in March 1917.
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In 1918 Boris Bazhanov graduated from high school, and that September entered the University of Kyiv despite the political situation.
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Boris Bazhanov joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1919, recalling later that he'd had to choose between Ukrainian nationalism and communism.
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In November 1920, Boris Bazhanov went to Moscow and studied engineering.
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Boris Bazhanov's application was accepted by Ivan Ksenofontov, a prominent member of the Soviet Union's state security apparatus.
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On 9 August 1923, Boris Bazhanov was appointed as the personal secretary and assistant to Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the CPSU.
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On 26 October 1923, Boris Bazhanov took notes at a Central Committee meeting attended by Stalin, Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky, at a time when Lenin was very ill and just three months before his death.
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From 1923 to 1924, Boris Bazhanov attended all of the Politburo meetings, working in Stalin's Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee and for the Politburo until the end of 1925.
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On 1 January 1928, Boris Bazhanov defected from the Soviet Union after becoming disillusioned with communism and dissatisfied with working under Stalin.
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Boris Bazhanov defected the same year that the first of Stalin's five-year plans for the national economy of the Soviet Union was accepted, avoiding the first purges that led up to the Great Purge in the mid-to-late 1930s.
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Soviet security agencies immediately launched a manhunt for Boris Bazhanov led by Georges Agabekov, the chief Soviet spy in the Near East at that time, until Agabekov himself defected to France shortly afterwards in June 1930.
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In October 1929, Stalin ordered assassin Yakov Blumkin to travel via Paris to kill Boris Bazhanov before travelling to the island of Buyukada in Istanbul, Turkey, to assassinate Trotsky, who had been deported from the Soviet Union in February 1929.
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Boris Bazhanov published an edition of his memoirs in France in 1980, entitled Memoirs of a Secretary of Stalin's.
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Boris Bazhanov died in the 4th arrondissement of Paris on 30 December 1982, and is buried at Pere Lachaise cemetery.
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The 1930 edition of Boris Bazhanov's memoir had him becoming an anti-communist well before he came to Moscow and took up positions with the Central Committee.
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In later editions, Boris Bazhanov retracted these statements, explaining that in reality he soured on the communist ideology during 1923 to 1924, while working at the Central Committee.