Liadov, Martyn Nikolaevich

(pseudonym of M. N. Mandel’shtam; party pseudonyms, Rusalka, Martyn, Grigorii, Semenovich, Saratovets, Lidin). Born Aug. 12 (24), 1872, in Moscow; died there Jan. 6, 1947. Active in the Soviets and party; historian. Member of the CPSU from 1893. Son of a merchant.

Liadov began his revolutionary activity in 1891 in Moscow Narodnik (Populist) circles, and in 1893 he helped found the Moscow Workers’ Union. He was arrested in 1895 and exiled to Verkhoiansk two years later. He joined the Saratov Committee of the RSDLP in 1902. Emigrating in 1903, he attended the Second Congress of the RSDLP, joining the Iskra majority. After the congress he worked as an agent of the party Central Committee. In 1904 he attended the meeting of 22 Bolsheviks in Geneva and was elected to the Bureau of the Committees of the Majority. He represented the Bolsheviks at the Amsterdam Congress of the Second International.

In 1905, Liadov fought at the barricades in Moscow and was a member of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP. He was a delegate to the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Party Congresses. Between 1909 and 1911 he belonged to the Otzovisty faction, and in 1911 he began working in Baku. In 1917 he was deputy chairman of the Baku Soviet and editor of the newspaper Izvestiia Bakinskogo soveta; he sided with the Mensheviks. From 1918 to 1920 he worked in Georgia. Returning to Moscow in 1920, he was readmitted into the Bolshevik Party and served on the Supreme Council of the National Economy.

From 1923 to 1929 Liadov was rector of the la. M. Sverdlov Communist University. In 1929 he headed Glavnauka, and in 1930 he served as director of the Archive of the October Revolution. He was a member of the academic boards of the Lenin Institute and of Istpart. He was a delegate to the Twelfth through Sixteenth Party Congresses; at the Fifteenth Pary Congress he was elected a member of the Central Auditing Commission. Liadov was also a candidate member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. He wrote the first works on the history of the party, published in 1906-07 and reissued in 1923-26, which over the years have not lost their importance. In 1932, Liadov was granted a special pension for outstanding services.