Volkhovskii, Feliks

(also F. V. Volkhovskoi). Born 1846, in Poltava; died July 21 (Aug. 3), 1914, in London. Russian revolutionary and writer. Born into a noble family.

Volkhovskii enrolled at Moscow University in 1863. In 1867, Volkhovskii organized the Ruble Society with G. A. Lopatin in order to observe the life of the peasants and to provide them with books. He was repeatedly arrested in the early 1870’s. In 1873, Volkhovskii was the leader of the Odessa branch of the Chaikovskii circle. He was arrested on Aug. 5, 1874; he was a defendant in the Trial of the 193 (October 1877-January 1878) and sentenced to exile in Tobol’sk Province. In August 1881 he was transferred to Tomsk, where he remained until Mar. 13, 1889. There he wrote for Sibirskaia gazeta under the pseudonym Ivan Brut. In 1889 he escaped and traveled to America. In 1890 he moved to London, where he was one of the leaders of the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom and of the Fund of the Free Russian Press. He became a Socialist Revolutionary in the early years of the 20th century. Volkhovskii was a prominent representative of the underground poetry of the 1870’s.