The Gulag and the Roslovian Smell

Abstract

My father, Ivars Smilga, was a Latvian, a militant for the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party1 since 1907. He was one of the first members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, commander of the Baltic fleet, the Army Council and the Helsinki fleet beginning in the summer of 1917. Lenin who was 22 years older than him, respected him deeply.