Panteleimon Lepeshinskii

Born Feb. 29 (Mar. 12), 1868, in the village of Studenets (present-day Kostiukovichi Raion, Mogilev Oblast); died Sept. 29, 1944, in Moscow. Figure in the Russian revolutionary movement. Doctor of Historical Sciences. Writer and publicist. Member of the Communist Party from 1898.

Lepeshinskii was the son of a priest. In 1886 as a student at the University of St. Petersburg he joined a circle of the People’s Will organization. In 1890 he was expelled from the university and banished from St. Petersburg (he later passed examinations at the University of Kiev without attending lectures). He continued his revolutionary activities in 1892 in Sevastopol’. Two years later he joined a Marxist circle in St. Petersburg. In December 1895, Lepeshinskii was arrested and in February 1897 exiled for three years to Enisei Province, where he met V. I. Lenin. In August 1899 he was one of 17 exiles to sign the “Protest of Russian Social Democrats” against the “Economists.” In 1900 he became an agent for Iskra (The Spark) in Pskov. He was a member of the organizational committee for the convening of the Second Congress of the RSDLP.

Lepeshinskii was arrested in November 1902 and again exiled to Enisei Province. In late 1903 he fled abroad. In Geneva he joined the Bolsheviks, working as a secretary of the Party Council. He helped establish the library and archive of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. He participated in preparations for the Third Congress of the RSDLP (1905) and conducted party work in Ekaterinoslav (present-day Dnepropetrovsk) and St. Petersburg. He began work in the statistical bureau of the Moscow city council in 1912. At the time of the October Revolution of 1917 he was in Orsha, where he directed the Orsha party organization. From 1918 he worked in the People’s Commissariat of Education; from 1921 to 1924 he was one of the initiators and directors of Istpart (Commission on Party History). From 1925 he was chairman of the Central Committee of the International Organization for Aid to the Fighters for the Revolution; in 1927 he became director of the Historical Museum; and in 1935–36 he was director of the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow.

Lepeshinskii was a delegate to the Fourteenth through Seventeenth Party Congresses. He became a personal pensioner in 1931. He is the author of a number of books on the history of the party, education, and communist education. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.