Vasilii Matveevich Serov

Born Dec. 29, 1878, in Khvalynsk, in what is now Saratov Oblast; died September 1918, in Chita. Participant in the revolutionary movement in Russia; one of the leaders of the struggle for Soviet power in Buriatia. Member of the Communist Party from 1902.

Son of a handicraftsman, Serov graduated from the Kazan Teachers Institute in 1899 and worked as a teacher in Atkarsk. Beginning in 1902, he audited courses at the University of St. Petersburg and led a Social Democratic student circle. He fought in the Revolution of 1905–07. In 1907, Serov was elected a deputy to the Second State Duma from Saratov Province, representing the Bolshevik section of the Social Democratic faction. He was also a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP(B) in 1907.

In late 1907, along with other Social Democratic deputies of the Duma, Serov was sentenced to five years at hard labor followed by banishment to eastern Siberia. Serov continued his revolutionary activity in Siberia, and from March 1917 to August 1918 served as chairman of the Verkhneudinsk Soviet. In August 1918 he was captured by White Guards in Chita and, after brutal torture, was executed. A monument to Serov was erected in Ulan-Ude in 1959.