Vasilii Petrovich Alekseev

(Vasia Alekseev). Born in St. Petersburg, 1896; died Dec. 18, 1919. One of the founders of communist youth organizations in Russia. Born into the family of a worker. Member of the Communist Party from 1912. Lathe operator in the Putilov factory.

In 1917 Alekseev was a member of the Narva-Peterhof District Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik); he was a member of the Petrograd Soviet. One of the founders of the Socialist Alliance of Working Youth in Petrograd, Alekseev was a member, and later the chairman, of the Petrograd Committee of this union and an editor of the journal Iunyi proletarii (Young Proletarian). He was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (Bolshevik), at which he spoke on youth alliances. During the October armed uprising, he led the alliance’s Petrograd troika (committee of three) in coordinating the alliance’s actions with the staff of the Red Guard; he participated in the storming of the Winter Palace. After the October Revolution, Alekseev served as assistant chairman of the Petrograd district soviet of people’s judges. In 1919 he fought against Iudenich’s band on an armored train. He subsequently served as chairman of the Gatchina revolutionary committee.