V. Volodarsky

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

V. Volodarsky (Russian: В.Володарский; 1891 – June 20, 1918), born Moisei Markovich Goldshtein or Goldstein (Моисей Маркович Гольдштейн), was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and early Soviet politician. The "V." in "V. Volodarsky" is not known to stand for anything; like many other revolutionaries, such as Lenin (Vladimir Ulyanov) and Stalin (Joseph Dzhugashvili), Goldshtein took and was known by another name, in his case "Volodarsky" without any forenames.

Volodarsky (as Goldshtein) was born in Ostropol, Western Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. In 1905, he became involved in revolutionary activity within the Jewish Bund, but soon joined the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party^[1]. Exiled by the government to Arkhangelsk in 1911, he was released under the general amnesty of 1913 and emigrated to the United States^[2]. During World War I, Volodarsky sided with the internationalist Mensheviks and moved to the left. In 1916-1917, he was a contributor to the New York-based monthly journal Novy Mir (New World), edited by Nikolai Bukharin^[3].

In May 1917, Volodarsky returned to Russia, joined the Mezhraiontsy group and was elected to the Petrograd City Duma. Along with the rest of the mezhraiontsy, he joined the Bolsheviks at the 6th Party Congress in July-August 1917 and soon became one of their best known public speakers and agitators^[4].

In mid-October 1917, while the Bolsheviks were debating whether to try to overthrow the Russian Provisional Government, Volodarsky sided with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, who were against the insurrection^[5]. At the Second Congress of Soviets during the October Revolution of 1917, Volodarsky was elected to the Supreme Soviet (VTsIK). He was appointed editor of the Red Gazette in Petrograd and chief of the Press Division of the Executive Committee of the Union of Northern Communes. This gave him broad censorship powers.

His colleague Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote:

And he was ruthless. He was imbued not only with the full menace of the October Revolution, but with a foretaste of the outbursts of Red terror which were to come after his death. There is no sense in concealing the fact that Volodarsky was a terrorist. He was profoundly convinced that if we were to falter in lashing out at the hydra of counter-revolution it would devour not only us but along with us the hopes that October had raised all over the world.

Volodarsky was assassinated on June 20, 1918 by Grigory Semyonov (Семёнов Григорий Иванович), a member of the Central Battle Unit of the Eser Party, during labor unrest at the Obukhov Works in Petrograd.

[edit] Footnotes

^ Most sources, for instance Boris Souvarine's Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism (Longmans, Green & Co., first edition 1939, multiple reprints ISBN 1-4191-1307-0 p.161) claim that Volodarsky was a Menshevik prior to 1917. However, Michael Glenny, the editor of the 1967 translation of Anatoly Lunacharsky's Revolutionary Silhouettes [1], writes that "he was exiled to Archangel while still a schoolboy for 'political unreliability'. In 1905 he joined the Bund, later the 'Spilka' or Ukrainian S.R. Party. Arrested in 1911, he was again sent to Archangel."
^ Edward Hallett Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, volume 3, first edition (Macmillan 1953), Norton paperback edition 1985, ISBN 0-393-30199-0, p.143
^ See "A Chronology" in Conversations in Exile: Russian Writers Abroad, edited John Glad, Duke University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8223-1298-0. p.275
^ See Lunacharsky's account or John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, first edition Boni and Liverlight, Inc. 1919 (Penguin Books, 1977, ISBN 0-14-018293-4, p.83)
^ Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, volume 3: The Triumph of the Soviets, Chapter 42, Lenin Summons to Insurrection