David Borisovich Riazanov [Goldendakh] (1870-1938) was a long-time participant in Marxist revolutionary organizations and founder of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. He was a prolific editor and publisher of works by Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, George Plekhanov and many other major figures in the history of the workers’ movement.

Riazanov became a revolutionary while in his teenage years in Odessa, and soon established contact with Plekhanov’s group, Emancipation of Labor. Arrested in 1891, he spent five years in prison and hard labor. He lived abroad for many of the years between 1900 and 1917, returning briefly in 1905 during the revolution. Prior to World War I, he was entrusted by the German Social Democracy with publishing the literary heritage of Marx and Engels. During the war he maintained an internationalist position, and participated in the Zimmerwald Conference.

After the February Revolution in 1917, Riazanov returned to Russia and soon joined the Mezhraiontsy in Petersburg. With them, he entered the Bolshevik Party in the summer of 1917. Riazanov was was one of the founders of the Socialist Academy and the Marx-Engels Institute). He was also main editor of the journal, Annals of Marxism, and the series of volumes Marx-Engels Archiv.

Many of the most important works of Marx and Engels were first published under his editorship, including Dialectics of Nature and the German Ideology. He also published many editions of Plekhanov, Kautsky and Hegel, as well as a Library of Materialism that included most of the pre-Marxist materialists.

He scoured Europe for anything connected with Marxism, purchasing either originals or photocopies when originals were not available. By the mid-1920s, the Marx-Engels Institute had an incomparable library of 450,000 books on Marxism.

Apart from his encyclopedic knowledge and mastery of languages, Riazanov was renowned for his outspokenness, volcanic temperament and oftentimes acerbic wit. At a public meeting in the 1920s he interrupted Stalin and said: “Cut it out, Koba. Don’t put yourself in a stupid position. Everyone knows very well that theory is not your strong side.”

Although not in the Left Opposition, Riazanov assisted Trotsky during the latter’s exile period in Alma Ata. He sent Trotsky money for a translation from the German of Marx’s Herr Vogt, an act that showed unusual courage for those times. In addition, he met with several other Left Oppositionists, a fact duly noted by the GPU/NKVD.

In March 1930, in honor of his sixtieth birthday, Riazanov was hailed in the press and awarded several honors, including a festschrift of 600 pages. Yet in February 1931, he was arrested for allegedly concealing Menshevik documents at the Institute. Riazanov was soon exiled to Saratov. Although allowed to return to Moscow briefly in 1934, he was sent back to Saratov after Kirov’s assassination; he remained there until his arrest in July 1937. He was tried on trumped up charges and shot in Saratov on 21 January 1938.

As a web site devoted to the history of Russian archives reports: “The local Chekists barbarically destroyed Riazanov’s personal library and his enormous archive. As one eyewitness recounted: ‘They unlocked David Borisovich’s study… and began to toss manuscripts, books, papers from his desk, and photographs onto the floor. The house had a large stove [Russian tile stoves of this kind are more like fireplaces]… They lit a fire in it and began to throw in everything. So that the papers would burn better, they crumpled them up in their hands, and tore books apart… This went on for several hours. The stove overheated, could not hold up, and in the end cracked from floor to ceiling.’”

Riazanov’s contribution to gathering and preserving the heritage of Marxism is unmatched; his persecution and execution are among Stalinism’s greatest crimes. Riazanov was not fully rehabilitated until 1990, and only in 1996 did the first major biography about him appear.