Organizer of Presnya’s workers’ fighting squads
“We are ending our struggle… we are alone in this world.”
Zinovy Litvin-Sedoy was a Bolshevik revolutionary from the working class of the Russian Empire who became a practical organizer through factory work, arrests, and exile. During the 1905 Moscow uprising he commanded the Presnya fighting squads, directing barricade defence and the organization of armed workers. His memoirs acknowledged the uprising’s unfavorable conditions while insisting that workers themselves had decided to fight and had carried the struggle. After 1917 he worked in Soviet transport administration and education.
Career Timeline
- 1893Entered the revolutionary movement
- 1897Joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
- 1905Commanded the Presnya fighting squads in Moscow
- 1906Participated in the Sveaborg sailors’ uprising
- 1917–1918Worked in the Kyiv Soviet and the party organization of an aviation unit
- 1919–1921Worked in the Central Administration of Military Communications and the People’s Commissariat of Transport
- 1921–1939Directed Moscow’s cotton-textile technical school named for the December uprising
- 1939–1947Lived in retirement