People of the Revolution and the USSR

Independent activity Communism 1883–1942 ✕ Shot

Swiss communist who organised Lenin’s sealed-train journey in 1917 and sat on the Comintern’s founding presidium

He organised Lenin’s party’s passage through Germany in 1917 and represented the Swiss communists at the Comintern’s founding congress in 1919.

From St. Gallen, he worked on the left of the Swiss Social Democrats and joined the Zimmerwald movement. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was the chief organiser of the sealed-train journey that took Lenin’s party from Switzerland across Germany back to Russia. At the Comintern’s founding congress in 1919 he represented the Swiss communists and sat on the presidium, and he helped found the Communist Party of Switzerland. A member of the National Council from 1917 to 1922, he later moved to the Soviet Union, was arrested in the purges in 1938 and was shot in a camp in 1942; he was rehabilitated in 1956.