Friedrich Andreevich Zemit — the Organizer of the Soviet Financial System

Abstract

The article is a historical and biographical study of the fate of an important Soviet financial official of Latvian origin, who played a crucial role in the formation of the Soviet financial and economic system during the Civil War, directly leading the reconstruction of regional financial systems and financial management bodies in Ukraine and Siberia. The hero of our story had good professional authority among the highest Soviet state and financial figures. F. A. Zemit was acquainted with V. I. Lenin; his close circle included N. N. Krestinskiy, G. Ya. Sokolnikov, A. O. Alskiy, and others. Mass repressions in the 1930s of representatives of the Latvian diaspora and Soviet financial employees foreshadowed Zemita’s tragic fate. The article addresses historical and biographical method used, as well as the general historiography of the issue at hand. The basis for this study was unpublished sources from the 1920s (mainly questionnaires, autobiography, and personnel records) in the Russian State Archive of Economics and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, as well as in five Siberian regional archives and periodicals. These allow the reconstruction of Zemit’s complex life in detail. The article concludes with thoughts about the influence of the Revolution and Civil War on the fate of the hero of this article. This publication may be of interest to a wide range of readers: specialists in the history of the Russian financial system, students of the history of the Latvian diaspora in Russia, and those interested in Soviet pre-war society, repressive policies of the Soviet state, and practical genealogy.