Knuniants, Bogdan

Born Nov. 14 (26), 1878, in Dzhamiat, near Shusha, in present-day Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast; died May 14 (27), 1911, in Baku. Active in the Russian revolutionary movement; a Bolshevik.

Knuniants began studying at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology in 1896. In 1897 he joined the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. He was exiled to Baku in the spring of 1901 and became a member of the city and Caucasian unity committees of the RSDLP. In 1902 he helped organize the Union of Armenian Social Democrats. He represented the Baku party organization at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, where he was part of the Iskra majority. In February 1904 he was arrested in Moscow; at his trial in March 1905 he delivered a brilliant speech castigating the tsarist regime. In September 1905 he was a member of the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP and the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. In December 1905 he was arrested again and sentenced to exile for life. He fled abroad in 1907. He participated in the work of the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International (1907) and the Fourth Conference of the RSDLP (Helsingfors [Helsinki], 1907). He subsequently worked in Baku. In September 1910 he was arrested; he died in prison.