Vasily Nikolayevich Kayurov
Василий Николаевич Каюров
Vyborg Bolshevik organizer who turned the Women's Day protest into the February Revolution
On 28 February, hearing of the Provisional Government's formation, Kayurov shouted to the soldiers: "Comrades! Has the workers' blood been flowing in the streets of Petrograd for three days merely to exchange one landlord for another?"
A metalworker who joined the RSDLP in 1898, Kayurov was a Bolshevik organizer in Petrograd's Vyborg district who, on 23 February 1917, defied the party committee's caution and transformed the women textile workers' International Women's Day strike into a revolutionary general strike. On 27 February he led an armed detachment that raided arsenals for rifles, freed revolutionaries from prisons, and attacked police stations: the moment the street protest became an armed uprising. After heading the 5th Army's political department in the Civil War, he worked in economic administration until 1932, when he and his son founded the Union of Marxist-Leninists with Ryutin's platform, an open challenge to Stalin; he died in Kazakh exile in 1936.
Career timeline
- 1898Joined the RSDLP, Bolshevik faction
- 1905Took part in Sormovo December armed uprising
- 1912–17Underground party work, Vyborg district, Petrograd
- 1917.02Led February Revolution actions; chairman, Vyborg District Soviet
- 1917.07Hid Lenin in his apartment
- 1918–20Head of Political Dept, 5th Army (Eastern Front)
- 1921–22Special commissioner, Sibrevkom; chair, Siberian Party Purge Commission
- 1932Founded Union of Marxist-Leninists; arrested, 3 years exile
- 1935–36Re-arrested, 3 years Kazakh exile; died in exile