Pyotr Ioakimovich Palchinsky
Пётр Иоакимович Пальчинский
1875–1929
✕ Shot for counter-revolutionary wrecking
The Provisional Government's last technocrat who directed the defense of the Winter Palace
As the palace fell, Palchinsky burst in before the advancing Red Guards shouting that an agreement had been reached and a deputation from the City Council and Soviet was on its way.
A mining engineer from Kazan who sympathized with anarchist ideas in his youth, Palchinsky took part in the 1905 Revolution and was forced into emigration. In 1917 he served as Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry and briefly as Governor-General of Petrograd; on 25 October, as Kishkin's assistant, he directed the defense of the Winter Palace and, moments before the building fell, burst in to announce the ministers' decision to surrender to the Bolshevik forces. Released and reintegrated under the Soviet system, he chaired the Russian Technical Society and consulted on GOELRO and the Dnieper hydroelectric project, but was caught in the repressive aftermath of the Shakhty Trial, arrested in 1928, and shot the following year for 'counter-revolutionary wrecking.'
Career Timeline
- 1900Mining engineer, Donbas coalfield survey
- 1902–1905Manager, Golovinsky coal mines, Irkutsk
- 1906–1913Emigration (London, Turin, Rome); mining dept., Turin World Exhibition
- 1915–1917Central War Industry Committee
- 1917.03–10Deputy Minister of Trade & Industry; Governor-General of Petrograd (Aug–Sep)
- 1917.10.25Head of Winter Palace defense, arrested
- 1918–1928Chairman, Russian Technical Society; GOELRO & Dnieprostroi consultant
- 1928–1929Arrested, sentenced to death, executed