Grigory Andreevich Gershuni

Grigori Gerschuni

Grigory Gershuni ( Russian Григорий Андреевич Гершуни ; born September 17 ^{. Jul} / 29. September  1870 ^greg. In Kovno , now Lithuania , † March 16 ^jul. / 29. March  1908 ^greg. In Zurich ) was a Russian politician and terrorist . He was a co-founder of the Social Revolutionary Party and from 1902 until his arrest in May 1903 headed its fighting organization , which was responsible for numerous assassinations against representatives of the Tsarist regime .

Life

Born to Jewish farmers Gershuni studied pharmacy at the University in Kiev . After completing his studies, he settled in Minsk and opened a bacteriological laboratory there.

As a staunch socialist, Gershuni was one of the founding members of the Labor Party for the Political Liberation of Russia, which in 1900 led to his first arrest by the Tsarist secret police, Ochrana .

Soon released from prison, he founded the Social Revolutionary Party in 1901 together with other staunch socialists, including Yekaterina Brezhkovskaya , Viktor Chernov , Alexander Kerensky and Evno Asef .

The following year, Gerschuni created the Social Revolutionary Party fighting organization, which was responsible for a large number of attacks on officials of the Tsarist regime in the following years. The first attack was directed against the Russian Interior Minister Dmitri Sipjagin , who was murdered in 1902 by the social revolutionary Stepan Balmaschow .

In 1903 the terrorists from Gershuni's organization murdered the tsarist governor of Ufa NM Bogdanovich. Gershuni was arrested in Kiev as early as May 1903 because the Okhrana had managed to hire Gershuni's deputy, Yevno Asef, as an undercover police spy. Asef provided the Ochrana with the evidence necessary to convict Gerschuni of involvement in terrorist attacks. As a result of Gerschuni's arrest, Asef took over the leadership of the fighting organization; Boris Savinkov was his deputy .

Gerschuni was sentenced to death for his actions , but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and forced labor because Gershuni denied any involvement in the attacks and submitted a petition for clemency to the tsar. As early as 1905, however, he managed to break out of a prison camp in Eastern Siberia and reached China, hidden in a sauerkraut barrel .

From China Gerschuni first went to America and then traveled to Europe, where he arrived in February 1907. There he further propagated the elimination of the tsarist regime through terror. Until his death, Gerschuni defended his successor Asef against rumors accusing Asef of treason. Gerschuni died in Zurich in 1908, presumably due to tuberculosis .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill, Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917 , Princeton University Press, p. 52, Princeton 1993
2. ↑ Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill, Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917 , Princeton University Press, p. 52, Princeton 1993

literature

Grigori Gerschuni: From the recent past. Hans Bondy Verlag Berlin 1909

Web links

Commons : Grigory Gershuni  - collection of images, videos and audio files