A Bolshevik praktik who pushed the movement's radical edge
“Until power has been transferred to the Soviets, there is no hope for an early end to the war.”
Sergei Bagdatev was a Bolshevik praktik who joined the party in 1903 and continued underground organizing through tsarist repression and exile. In April 1917, he issued a leaflet in the Petrograd Committee's name calling for the Provisional Government's removal, contrary to party decisions, and was disciplined for violating party discipline. His premature slogan, alongside his insistence on Soviet power, captures the revolution's tension between an urgent political aim and the practical work of winning a mass audience.
Career Timeline
- 1903Joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
- 1908Member of the Petersburg Committee and its executive commission
- 1917Petrograd Committee praktik; issued the April demonstration leaflet
- 1917Took part in the June and July demonstrations; arrested by the Provisional Government
- 1918–1925Party work in Moscow and Transcaucasia
- 1926–1939Deputy chair of the Irrigation Committee under the USSR Council of People's Commissars; chaired Rezino-trest and other bodies
- 1940–1949Lived as a personal pensioner