Proshian, Prosh

Born 1883 in the village of Ashtarak, now in Razdan Raion, Armenian SSR; died Dec. 16, 1918, in Moscow. Russian political figure. Son of the Armenian writer P. Proshian.

While a student at Novorossiia University in Odessa, Prosh’ian joined the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party. In 1905 he was sentenced to six years of hard labor for participation in an attempt to free political prisoners. He served his term in Eastern Siberia. After his transfer to permanent settlement, he escaped. He was caught and in 1913 once again exiled to Siberia, from where he escaped abroad. During World War I (1914–18), Prosh’ian disseminated internationalist propaganda.

Prosh’ian returned to Russia after the February Revolution of 1917, joined the left wing of the SR Party, and fought against the defensist position of the SR Central Committee. As a result of this, he was twice expelled from the party in 1917. Prosh’ian advocated an alliance with the Bolsheviks and participated in the October armed insurrection in Petrograd. At the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, he was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Prosh’ian was a cofounder of the Left SR Party and a member of its Central Committee. In December 1917 he joined the Council of People’s Commissars as people’s commissar of postal and telegraph services. As an opponent of the Brest Peace of 1918, he left the Council of People’s Commissars in March 1918 along with other Left SR’s. Prosh’ian was one of the leaders of the Left SR Revolt of 1918 and went underground after the revolt was suppressed. On Nov. 27, 1918, a revolutionary tribunal sentenced Prosh’ian in absentia to three years in prison. Prosh’ian died of typhus.

V. I. Lenin evaluated Prosh’ian in the article “In Memory of Comrade Prosh’ian” (Poln. sobr. soch, 5th ed., vol. 37, pp. 384–85).