The Petrograd Cheka chairman who resisted the terror, and became its trigger
“I am not soft at all. If there is no other way, I will shoot every counter-revolutionary with my own hand and be perfectly calm. I oppose executions because they are inexpedient — they only provoke bitterness and produce no positive results.” — to his Petrograd Cheka comrades
Born to a Jewish family in Cherkassy. After graduating from Kiev University's law faculty, he joined the RSDLP in 1898, initially siding with the Mensheviks. At the VI Congress in August 1917 he entered the Bolshevik Party and was elected to the Central Committee; during the October insurrection he directed the uprising from the Military Revolutionary Party Center. Appointed first chairman of the Petrograd Cheka in March 1918, he opposed hostage-taking and extrajudicial executions, maintaining a more restrained line than Moscow. He was assassinated on 30 August 1918 (the same day Lenin was wounded) and his death became the immediate trigger for the official proclamation of the Red Terror.
Career Timeline
- 1890sBegins Social Democratic activity in Kiev
- 1897Graduates Kiev University law; arrested for agitation during army service
- 1901–05Eight-year exile to Olyokminsk, Yakutia; escapes in 1905
- 1906–14Exiled to Vologda and Arkhangelsk; attends 1912 Vienna SD conference
- 1914–17Emigration: Nashe Slovo correspondent; lives in Stockholm
- 1917.5Returns to Russia, joins the Mezhraiontsy
- 1917.7–8VI Congress: joins Bolsheviks with Mezhraiontsy; elected CC member
- 1917.10–12MRC and Military Revolutionary Party Center member; commissar for Constituent Assembly
- 1918.3–8First chairman of Petrograd Cheka; concurrently Commissar of Internal Affairs
Related historical events
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionMilitary Revolutionary Party Center member, Constituent Assembly commissarAs a member of the five-person Military Revolutionary Party Center, he helped direct the armed insurrection, and was appointed commissar overseeing elections to the Constituent Assembly.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionPetrograd Cheka chairmanHe tried to restrain the Red Terror but was assassinated in 1918, becoming its trigger instead.
Commissar over the Constituent Assembly and Its Dissolution
On 23 November 1917 the Bolsheviks took control of the All-Russian Commission on Elections to the Constituent Assembly, which had already completed its practical work, and installed Uritsky as its new commissar. On 26 November Lenin signed the decree "On the Opening of the Constituent Assembly," which set a quorum of 400 deputies and stipulated that the Assembly could be opened only by a person authorized by the Council of People's Commissars (that is, a Bolshevik), effectively blocking its convocation. In late November Uritsky issued an order forbidding the execution of any directive issued by the Commission outside Bolshevik control.
Through December and into January 1918, Uritsky was the operational head of electoral affairs, and his name became publicly inseparable from the fate of the Constituent Assembly. When the Assembly finally convened at the Tauride Palace on 5 January (O.S.) 1918, the Bolsheviks and Left SRs walked out after it refused to recognize Soviet authority. That night an order co-signed by Lenin and Uritsky was issued to the guard: it prohibited violence against the "counter-revolutionary" deputies and guaranteed their free exit, while barring re-entry without special permission. In practice, sailor Anatoly Zheleznyakov dispersed the deputies with the famous words "the guard is tired."
The following day, 6 January, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted the decree dissolving the Constituent Assembly. Lunacharsky later recalled: "One should have seen our 'commissar over the Constituent Assembly' in all those stormy days!" He described how Uritsky met the democrats' "pompous phrases about law and freedom" with an "ironic coldness" that dispelled their illusions. A Right SR deputy was heard to murmur that "there is something fatal in Uritsky."
The dissolution symbolized the decisive break from parliamentary democracy to Soviet power, and Uritsky was the man who executed that transition on the ground. The episode remained fiercely contested: during the Civil War, the SRs established the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) in Samara, invoking the dissolved Assembly as their banner of armed resistance.