Uritskii, Moisei Solomonovich

Born Jan. 2 (14), 1873, in the city of Cherkassy; died Aug. 30, 1918, in Petrograd. Figure in the revolutionary movement in Russia. Member of the RSDLP from 1898.

The son of a merchant, Uritskii graduated from the law faculty of the University of Kiev in 1897. Involved in the revolutionary movement from the early 1890’s, he was arrested in 1899 and exiled to Yakutsk Province. After the Second Congress of the RSDLP, he became a Menshevik.

Uritskii took part in the Revolution of 1905–07 in St. Petersburg and Krasnoiarsk. Arrested in 1906, he was exiled first to Vologda and then to Arkhangel’sk Province. In 1914 he moved abroad. After the February Revolution of 1917, Uritskii returned to Petrograd and joined the Mezhraiontsy, with whom he was accepted into the Bolshevik Party at the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B); at the same congress, he was named to the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B).

During October 1917, Uritskii was a member of the Party Military Revolutionary Center for Leadership of the Armed Insurrection and a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee. After the triumph of the October Revolution, he became commissar of foreign affairs and later commissar of the All-Russian Commission for the Convocation of the Constituent Assembly. In February 1918 he served on the Committee for the Revolutionary Defense of Petrograd. Uritskii sided with the Left Communists on the question of whether or not to sign the Brest-Litovsk Treaty of 1918. At the Seventh Congress of the RCP(B), he was named a candidate member of the Central Committee. In March 1918 he became chairman of the Petrograd Cheka.

Uritskii was killed by a Socialist Revolutionary. He is buried on the Field of Mars.