Document 55

From TsK investigation of A. D. Bruskin

RGASPI, f. 17, op. 100, d. 39599, l. 10. Typed original.

Regarding the substance of the declaration received concerning A. D. Bruskin, from a review of materials from the master file of party personnel it has been ascertained that Bruskin did not conceal his membership in the Menshevik Party. This information is consistent in all the documents.

Bruskin joined the Menshevik Party after the February Revolution and was a member until December 1920. In December 1920, as a student at the Kharkov Technological Institute, he joined the Bolshevik Party. He was made a member without going through the candidate probationary period. His acceptance into the party upon leaving another party was approved by the TsKK(b) of Ukraine. As he indicates in his autobiographical statement, while a Menshevik (in N. N. Popov's group), A. D. Bruskin volunteered to go to the front to fight Denikin. He was in the 3rd Lugansk International Regiment as a Red Army soldier from March 1919 until August 1919. After that he remained in White territory and from September 1919 until October 1919 worked as an inspector in a Kharkov student cooperative society. In October he was arrested by Denikin's counterintelligence (at that time he was still a Menshevik) and was incarcerated for one month. After prison, from December 1919 until May 1920, he worked as a technician for the Ukrainian Economic Council before entering the Technological Institute--and it was there that he joined the Bolsheviks.

Whether Comrade Bruskin was a member of the Kharkov City Committee of Mensheviks could not be established since in his personal file there are no pertinent documents and he does not write about this in his autobiographical statement. There is nothing indicated as well in the registration form for changing party documents.

Regarding his arrest by the Cheka in 1920 for being a Menshevik, there is also no information. He himself states that he was arrested by Denikin's Secret Police (in October-November 1919), and not in September 1919 as is written in the declaration.

As for the matter in question, on 29/9/1936 Comrade Shkiriatov called in Bruskin and established that he had worked with the individuals named in the declaration, that he had even invited Efros to work with him, and that Efros had Dusavitsky in tow. In conversation with Comrade Shkiriatov, Comrade Bruskin maintained that at the Cheliabinsk Tractor Plant he did not work with the individuals named.