One of the six who built Iskra: the Menshevik theorist who parted with Lenin
Witnessing the October Revolution, Potresov called it "the murder of democracy" and the Bolshevik regime that followed "the socialism of fools."
One of the six original editors of Iskra (1900) and a founding figure of the RSDLP. At the 1903 party congress he sided with Martov and became a leading Menshevik theorist, arguing for a mass party against Lenin's vanguard model. During WWI he led the defensist wing of Menshevism; he rejected the October Revolution and was briefly imprisoned by the Cheka in 1919. He left the USSR in 1925 and continued writing against the Soviet regime from Berlin and Paris until his death.
Career timeline
1892–1896Active in Struve's and Martov's SD circles; contacts with Emancipation of Labour group
1896Co-founds the Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class
1897–1899Arrested and exiled to Vyatka province
1900–1903One of six founding editors of Iskra; joins Menshevik leadership after the II Congress
1905–1907Returns to Russia; edits Menshevik papers Nachalo and Nevsky Golos
1910–1914Edits the Liquidator journal Nasha Zarya; co-edits the 4-volume The Social Movement in Russia
1914–1917Leads the Menshevik defensists; publishes Nashe Delo
1925–1934Exiled in Berlin and Paris; publishes Notes of a Social Democrat and the book In the Grip of Illusions
Menshevism's theoretical pillar who stood for democratic socialism against Lenin
In 1943, the lifelong anti-Bolshevik Menshevik leader Dan wrote in The Origins of Bolshevism that Bolshevism had been chosen by history to be 'the carrier of socialism, the key idea of our epoch.'
Fyodor Dan was a revolutionary, physician, and a founding leader and chief theorist of the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP. At the 1903 Second Congress he sided with Martov against Lenin; after the February Revolution he became the leading ideologist of 'revolutionary defencism' and served on the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee. Exiled in 1922, he headed the Menshevik Foreign Delegation from Martov's death in 1923 until 1940, upholding democratic socialism against both Bolshevik authoritarianism and Western social-democratic accommodation. In The Origins of Bolshevism (1943) he recognized Bolshevism as the historical carrier of socialism while arguing for political liberalization in the Soviet Union.
Career timeline
1894–1896Active in St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class; arrested and exiled to Vyatka
1901–1903Emigrated to Berlin, joined Iskra assistance group; at RSDLP 2nd Congress sided with Martov, co-founded Menshevik faction
1905–1912Editorial board of Nachalo, main Menshevik paper; delegate to 4th and 5th RSDLP Congresses; co-editor of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata
1917Executive Committee of Petrograd Soviet, Presidium of Central Executive Committee; ideologist of 'revolutionary defencism'
1919–1920Speaker for Mensheviks at 7th and 8th All-Russian Congresses of Soviets; served as Red Army doctor
1922–1923Arrested, imprisoned, then exiled abroad; helped found Socialist Workers' International; deprived of Soviet citizenship
1923–1940Headed Menshevik Foreign Delegation; exile activity in Berlin then Paris
1941–1947Exile in New York, published Novy Put journal; wrote The Origins of Bolshevism (1943)
Author of 'Notes on the Revolution' and agrarian economist in whose apartment the Bolshevik CC voted for armed uprising
"Sukhanov is one of the best representatives of the petty bourgeoisie" — Lenin, Sept 1, 1917
Born Nikolai Gimmer. A founding member of the Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee after the February Revolution, he belonged to the Menshevik-Internationalists, opposing the war and the Provisional Government while arguing for a united socialist coalition. His seven-volume memoir 'Notes on the Revolution' remains one of the most vivid primary sources on 1917. On October 10, 1917, the Bolshevik CC met in his Petrograd apartment and resolved on armed uprising. Sentenced to 10 years at the 1931 Menshevik Trial and shot on false charges in 1940; posthumously rehabilitated.
Career timeline
1903–1905Joined SR Party; arrested 1904 in Taganka Prison; freed Oct 1905, took part in Moscow December armed uprising
1911–1913Exiled 3 years to Arkhangelsk; compiled agricultural census data
1914–1917Editor of 'Sovremennik' and 'Letopis'; anti-war internationalist; Feb 1917 founding member of Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee, launched first 'Izvestiya'
1917–1918Menshevik-Internationalist; editor of 'Novaya Zhizn'; VTsIK member 2nd–4th convocations; expelled June 1918
1919–1923Wrote and published 7-volume memoir 'Notes on the Revolution' (Записки о революции)
1920–1929Left Menshevik Party; worked in trade agencies & Agrarian Institute; Communist Academy member; 1928 speech opposing forced collectivization
1931Sentenced to 10 years at Menshevik Trial; imprisoned in Verkhneuralsk political isolator
1940Sentenced to death June 29; shot same day in Omsk prison
The Menshevik Labour Minister sent to calm the crowds during the April Crisis
On 20 April 1917, as 15,000 armed soldiers and sailors gathered before the Mariinsky Palace outraged by Milyukov's note, Skobelev and Gots were sent to address them: their speeches were unavailing.
A son of Baku's wealthy Molokan merchant class, he studied at the Vienna Polytechnic and helped edit Trotsky's Vienna Pravda. After the February Revolution he became deputy chairman of the Petrograd Soviet; during the April Crisis he was sent with Abram Gots to calm the armed crowds outside the Mariinsky Palace, and on 5 May 1917 he entered the first coalition government as Minister of Labour. He opposed the October Revolution but later reconciled, joining the Bolshevik Party in 1922 and working in the Soviet foreign trade system until his execution during the Great Purge in 1938.
Career timeline
1903Joined RSDLP; led Baku oil workers' strike
1906–1912Exile in Vienna; edited Trotsky's Pravda; graduated Vienna Polytechnic (1912)
1912–1917Deputy, Fourth Duma (Russian population of Transcaucasia); Menshevik faction
Bolshevik diplomat who took part in the decision to execute Nicholas II: gunned down in Warsaw
7 June 1927, Warsaw Central Station. Voykov was meeting Arkady Rosengolts when White émigré youth Boris Kowerda rushed forward and fired his pistol. Upon arrest, Kowerda declared: "I avenged Russia, for millions of people."
Voykov, born into a Ukrainian peasant family, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet diplomat who joined the RSDLP as a teenager. As Commissar of Supply for the Ural Soviet in 1918, he took part in the special session that decided the execution of Nicholas II and his family, and signed orders for sulfuric acid used to destroy the bodies. From 1924 he served as Soviet Polpred to Poland, conducting diplomatic work in Warsaw until June 1927, when he was shot and killed by Boris Kowerda, a young White émigré. His assassination became a flashpoint in Soviet-Polish relations; in retaliation, the Soviet government extrajudicially executed twenty former imperial aristocrats in Moscow.
Career timeline
1903Joins RSDLP, aligns with Mensheviks
1906Failed bombing attempt on Yalta police chief; flees
1907–1917Exile in Geneva; studies mathematics and chemistry at University of Geneva; active as Menshevik-Internationalist
1917.08Joins Bolsheviks; member of Yekaterinburg Soviet and Military Revolutionary Committee
1918.01–12Commissar of Supply, Ural Region Soviet
1918.07Participates in Ural Soviet decision to execute Nicholas II; signs orders for sulfuric acid
1919–1920Works in distribution at People's Commissariat of Food Supplies; deputy chair of Tsentrosoyuz
1920–1921Board member, People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade; serves on Export Commission
1924–1927Polpred (Minister Plenipotentiary) of the USSR to Poland
1927.06.07Assassinated by White émigré Boris Kowerda at Warsaw Central Station
From the H-bomb to the tokamak: theoretical physicist of two nuclear ages
After the first successful H-bomb test in 1953, Tamm left weapons work and returned to Moscow, devoting his remaining eighteen years to the peaceful use of fusion.
Igor Tamm was a Soviet theoretical physicist who, with Ilya Frank, explained Cherenkov radiation, earning the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics. From 1934 until his death he headed theoretical physics at FIAN, the center of Soviet theory; his contributions include Tamm surface states, predicting the neutron's magnetic moment, and the Tamm-Dancoff approximation. Recruited by Igor Kurchatov in 1948, he led the H-bomb theory group at Arzamas-16 (1949–1953), whose Sloika design succeeded in the first Soviet thermonuclear test, August 1953. In 1951, with Andrei Sakharov, Tamm proposed the tokamak (toroidal magnetic plasma confinement), now the basis for all major fusion reactor designs. In his later years he signed the Letter of the Three Hundred against Lysenkoism (1955) and the letter of 25 opposing Stalin's rehabilitation (1966).
Career timeline
1918Graduated from Moscow State University
1924–1930Lecturer → chair of theoretical physics, Moscow State University
1934–1971Head of theoretical department, Lebedev Physical Institute (FIAN)
1949–1953Head of theoretical group, thermonuclear bomb project, Arzamas-16
1951Proposed the tokamak concept with Sakharov
1953Full member, USSR Academy of Sciences
1958Nobel Prize in Physics (explanation of Cherenkov radiation)
1966Signed letter of 25 against Stalin's rehabilitation
