SR faction leader in the Petrograd Soviet, dispatched to the Mariinsky Palace to defuse the April Crisis demonstrations
Sukhanov judged him 'an excellent technician, organizer, perhaps even an administrator, but no politician at all.'
Born into a wealthy Jewish tea-merchant family in Moscow, he followed his older brother Mikhail into the Socialist Revolutionary Party and joined its Combat Organization in 1906. After the February Revolution he emerged as the de facto leader of the SR faction in the Petrograd Soviet; during the April Crisis, he and Skobelev were dispatched to calm demonstrating soldiers before the Mariinsky Palace, but their speeches proved unavailing, and in June he was elected chairman of the VTsIK. After October he chaired the Committee for the Salvation of the Homeland and Revolution and led armed resistance against the Bolsheviks; sentenced to death at the 1922 show trial, his sentence was commuted, and he died in a Krasnoyarsk labour camp in 1940.
Career Timeline
- 1906Joined the SR Combat Organization; participated in terror planning
- 1907Arrested; sentenced to 8 years hard labour (katorga)
- 1915–1917Settlement in Usolye, Irkutsk; joined the Siberian Zimmerwaldist group
- 1917.03–06SR faction leader in the Petrograd Soviet; Executive Committee member
- 1917.06–10Chairman of the VTsIK (1st All-Russian Congress of Soviets)
- 1917.10–1918Chairman, Committee for Salvation of Homeland and Revolution; led the junker uprising
- 1918–1920Organized SR armed detachments; fought on two fronts against Bolsheviks and Whites
- 1922Main defendant at the SR show trial; sentenced to death, commuted
- 1925–1937Exiled to Simbirsk (Ulyanovsk); economic planning work
- 1937–1940Rearrested during the Great Terror; sentenced to 25 years; died in Krasnoyarsk labour camp