Gessen, Iosif Vladimirovich

Born Apr. 2 (14), 1866; died 1943. Russian bourgeois publicist and jurist. One of the founders and leaders of the Kadet party, as well as a member of its Central Committee.

Gessen was born in Odessa. In 1889 he graduated from the department of jurisprudence at St. Petersburg University. He became a barrister in 1904. He was a deputy from St. Petersburg to the Second State Duma (1907). Together with P. N. Miliukov, he edited the newspaper Narodnaia svoboda (December 1905) and then Rech (February 1906)—organs of the Kadet Party. After the October Socialist Revolution, he became an enemy of Soviet power and a White émigré. Beginning in 1920 he published the White Guard newspaper Rul’ in Berlin and beginning in 1921, the collections Archivesof the Russian Revolution.