Liber, Mikhail

Liber, Mikhail Isaakovich

 

(pseudonym of M. I. Gol’dman). Born May 24 (June 5), 1880, in Vilnius; died Oct. 4, 1937. One of the leaders of the Bund and Menshevik Party.

The son of an office worker, Liber joined the Central Committee of the Bund in 1902. In 1903 he headed the Bund’s delegation to the Second Congress of the RSDLP, taking an extremely rightist, anti-Iskra position. After the congress he became a Menshevik. At the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP in 1907, Liber was elected to the party Central Committee by the Bund. During the reactionary period from 1907 to 1910 he was a Menshevik Liquidator, and in 1912 he became active in the August antiparty bloc. During World War I he was a social chauvinist. After the February Revolution of 1917, Liber was a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and a member of the first convocation of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee. Liber was hostile to the October Revolution of 1917. Subsequently he retired from politics, devoting himself to business.