Mikhail Isaakovich Liber
Михаил Исаакович Либер
A Menshevik who defended the revolution against its Bolshevik direction
After the June 1917 crisis, he called for firm measures against the Bolsheviks in the name of defending the revolution.
Born Mikhail Goldman, Mikhail Liber was a revolutionary who rose through the Bund, the Jewish workers’ movement, to become a leading Menshevik. At the 1903 RSDLP Congress he defended the Bund’s organisational autonomy, while in 1917 he tried to combine revolutionary democracy with a policy of revolutionary defensism. In the Petrograd Soviet and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee he supported coalition with the Provisional Government, and after the June 10 demonstration crisis he became a leading advocate of firm measures against the Bolsheviks. His opposition to the October uprising and to negotiations with the Bolsheviks was followed by repeated arrests and exile; executed in 1937, he was rehabilitated posthumously.
Career timeline
- 1896Joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party
- 1897–1902Founding-generation Bund activist; joined its Central Committee in 1902
- 1903Bund delegate to the Second Congress of the RSDLP
- 1905Executive Committee member of the St Petersburg Soviet
- 1907Elected to the RSDLP Central Committee
- 1917.02–06Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee member; Bund right-wing leader
- 1917.06–10Member, Presidium member and deputy chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee
- 1917.09–10Member of the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic
- 1922–1923Member of the Menshevik Central Committee Bureau