Pavel Ivanovich Iakobi

(also P. I. Iakobii). Born 1842, in Kazan; died March 11 (24), 1913, in St. Petersburg. Russian revolutionary of the 1860’s and member of Land and Liberty (Zemlia i Volia); later a physician, psychiatrist, and ethnographer. Brother of V. I. Iakobi.

P. I. Iakobi graduated from the Mikhail Artillery School in 1860 and was sent to study at the Artillery Academy. He soon left the academy, however, and undertook studies at the University of Heidelberg. Iakobi fought in the Polish Uprising of 1863–64 and was severely wounded in the battle of Kruszyna. After his recovery, he became chief of staff of a group of rebel detachments in Galicia. In 1867 he graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Zürich.

Iakobi was one of the leaders of the Young Emigration. Together with A. S. Serno-Solov’evich, he criticized A. I. Herzen’s liberal illusions. In collaboration with V. A. Zaitsev, he wrote the article “The Position of the Workers in Western Europe From the Point of View of Social Hygiene”; the article, which contained extensive quotations from Marx’ Das Kapital, was published in the journal Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny i obshchest-vennoi gigieny (1870, no. 3). During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), Iakobi volunteered as a physician in G. Garibaldi’s Vosges Army.

After this return to Russia in 1890, Iakobi served as a physician in such cities as Moscow and Orel, and he engaged in scholarly pursuits.