Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich

Born Aug. 12 (24), 1870, in Kishinev; died February 1920 in Novorossiisk. Russian politician, monarchist, member of the Black Hundreds. Bessarabian pomeshchik (landowner).

Purishkevich was one of the founders of the League of the Russian People in 1905, after the breakup of which he headed the League of the Archangel Michael in 1908. He was a deputy to the Second through Fourth State Dumas, where he delivered anti-Semitic speeches inciting pogroms. During World War I he demanded “strong authority” to pursue the war to a “victorious end.” Purishkevich was a party to the murder of G. E. Rasputin in 1916. After the February Revolution of 1917, he supported the restoration of the monarchy. In October 1917 he headed a counterrevolutionary conspiracy in Petrograd. He was condemned by a Soviet court in January 1918 but was granted amnesty on May 1. Moving to the south, he collaborated with the White Guards and published the reactionary newspaper Blagovest in Rostov-on-Don. He died of typhus.