Vladislav Minasovich Kasparov

(pseudonym of V. M. Kaspar’iants). Born Jan. 20 (Feb. 1), 1884, in Khankendy, now Stepanakert; died Sept. 6 (19), 1917, in Davos, Switzerland. Participant in the Transcaucasian and Russian revolutionary movements; became a Bolshevik in 1903.

Kasparov studied at the law school of the University of St. Petersburg and at the Higher Commercial School in Berlin. From 1907 to 1912 he was a member of the Baku, St. Petersburg, and Rostov committees of the RSDLP; he emigrated in 1913. From 1914 to 1917 he lived in Bern and Davos and corresponded with V. I. Lenin (see Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vols. 48 and 49); on his assignment, Kasparov corresponded clandestinely on behalf of the Central Committee of the RSDLP with Bolshevik organizations in Russia. In February 1915, at the Bern conference of Bolshevik cells abroad, he was elected a member of the Committee of Foreign Organization (KZO) of the RSDLP; he was a member of the distribution committee and was treasurer of the KZO. In 1913–14 he worked on the staff of Pravda. Lenin praised Kasparov’s work highly (ibid., vol. 54, p. 83).