MRC commissar who twice entered the Winter Palace to parley and talked its defenders into walking away
Inside the Winter Palace, Palchinsky ordered his arrest. The cadets protested: 'His detention damages our honour. We guaranteed his safety.' The commissar walked free, and soon the cadets walked out too.
A Jewish youth from Ekaterinoslav who joined the revolutionary movement at fifteen, Chudnovsky followed Trotsky through emigration in Paris and New York, returning via the Mezhraiontsy to the Bolsheviks in May 1917. As an MRC commissar during the October insurrection, he twice entered the Winter Palace to parley (arrested the first time by Palchinsky, then freed at the cadets' insistence), and his promise of safe passage to those who would lay down their arms persuaded waves of defenders to quit the building before the final entry. Appointed extraordinary commissar of the South-Western Front, he fought German occupation forces and the Ukrainian Central Rada; captured and sentenced to death by the Rada in December 1917, he was freed by Soviet troops entering Kiev, only to die months later, surrounded near Liubotyn in April 1918, when he shot himself.
Career Timeline
- 1905–1910Joined revolutionary movement, Menshevik; exiled to Yenisei Governorate
- 1913–1916Emigre with Trotsky: Paris (Nashe Slovo), Copenhagen, New York (Novy Mir)
- 1917.05–08Returned to Russia; Mezhraiontsy → Bolsheviks; anti-war agitation in the army
- 1917.10Petrograd MRC commissar to Preobrazhensky Regiment; Winter Palace parleys; fought at Pulkovo
- 1917.11–12Extraordinary commissar, South-Western Front; captured by Rada, sentenced to death
- 1918.01–04Freed by Soviet troops; commissar of civil affairs, Kiev; surrounded near Liubotyn, shot himself