Revolutionary organizer who led the Moscow party and pioneered early Soviet diplomacy
When the bomb fell, he rushed toward it, calling out: "Calm down, nothing special, we'll sort out what this is right away."
A Bolshevik organizer who served as first secretary of Soviet Russia's earliest diplomatic mission, the Plenipotentiary Representation in Germany, before leading the Moscow party through the Civil War as secretary of the Moscow Committee from July 1918. He co-chaired the City Defence Committee with Felix Dzerzhinsky and was killed in September 1919 when anarchists threw a bomb into a party meeting at Leontievsky Lane.
Career Timeline
- 1901Joined the RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
- 1902Arrested, exiled to Siberia
- 1904Escaped to Geneva, met Lenin
- 1905Participated in Moscow December Uprising
- 1918First Secretary, RSFSR Plenipotentiary Representation in Germany
- 1918–1919Secretary, Moscow City Party Committee
- 1919Co-chaired City Defence Committee with Dzerzhinsky