Volodarskii, V.

(pseudonym of Moisei Markovich Gol’dshtein). Born 1891, in the village of Ostropol’, now Khmel’nitskii Oblast; died June 20, 1918, in Petrograd. Revolutionary figure. Joined the Communist Party in 1917. Born into the family of a poor artisan. Expelled from the sixth grade of the Gymnasium for “political unreliability.”

Volodarskii joined the Bund in 1905 and was later a Menshevik. Between 1908 and 1911 he engaged in revolutionary work in Volyn’ and Podol’e provinces. After being repeatedly arrested, he was banished to Arkhangelsk Province in 1911. In 1913 he emigrated to North America, where he joined the American Socialist Party and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. During World War I (1914-18) he was an internationalist. In May 1917 he returned to Petrograd and joined the mezhraiontsy (interfaction group of the Social Democrats) and later the Bolshevik Party. He was elected a member of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). Volodarskii was one of the most talented orators of the Party and an extremely popular agitator among workers and soldiers. In 1917 he was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (Bolshevik), and in September of that year he was elected to the presidium of the Petrograd soviet. He was an active participant in the October armed uprising. After the October Revolution, he was commissar for press, propaganda, and agitation and editor of Krasnaia gazeta. He was also a delegate to the Second, Third, and Fourth Congresses of Soviets and a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. On June 20, 1918, he was killed by a Socialist Revolutionary while on the way to a meeting. He is buried in the Marsovo Pole Square in Leningrad.