Editing Openai/6874b524-4134-8013-b5e6-0601c853d841 (section)

===== By 1922, Artur had secured a permanent position within the Central Economic Planning Bureau (Gosplan). He was discreet, efficient, and completely apolitical in public—traits that made him indispensable in the early days of the New Economic Policy (NEP). =====

Privately, he helped both Israel and Yakob navigate the increasingly Kafkaesque approval systems for artistic and cultural work. He did not necessarily agree with their choices, but he understood how to manipulate the system.

Artur had no illusions. He often said to Rosa: “They believe the future can be calculated. I merely provide the illusion of the math.”

By 1928, as Stalin moved to crush the NEP and enforce collectivization, Artur quietly transferred into a new department under the Commissariat of Internal Affairs—predecessor to the NKVD. Officially, he was working on rural administrative reform. Unofficially, he began compiling profiles of "culturally problematic elements"—including, perhaps, his own brother.