Afanasii Matiushenko

Born May 2 (14), 1879, in the village of Dergachi, now in Kharkov Oblast; died Oct. 20 (Nov. 2), 1907, in Sevastopol’. One of the leaders of the uprising on the battleship Potemkin in 1905. Son of a shoemaker.

Matiushenko was employed as a worker, first in Kharkov and later in Odessa. In 1900 he began serving in the Black Sea Fleet, becoming later a noncommissioned officer. He established close ties with the Social Democrats and engaged in revolutionary propaganda. In the period of the uprising, between June 14 and 25, he was chairman of the ship’s commission. Subsequently, he emigrated to Switzerland, where he was in contact with V. I. Lenin and became a member of the United Seamen’s Committee. In 1906 he was in Rumania and then America. In 1907, in Paris, he aligned himself with the anarcho-syndicalists. He returned to Russia in June 1907. On July 3 (16) he was arrested in Nikolaev. As a result of the verdict of a naval field tribunal, he was hanged.