Vladimir Purishkevich

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Vladimir Purishkevich, 1910

Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich (

anticommunist views.[1][2] He helped lead the paramilitary Black Hundreds during the Russian Revolution of 1905. He later served in the State Duma, where he gained a reputation for courting of public controversy. Together with Felix Yusupov and Dmitri Pavlovich he took part in the assassination of Grigori Rasputin
in late 1916.

After the February Revolution, Purishkevich was one of the only leaders of the Black Hundreds to remain politically active. He eventually joined the White movement and died from typhus in 1920.

Biography

Early career

Born as the son of a poor nobleman in

classical philology.[3] Around 1900, he moved to Saint Petersburg. He became a member of the Russian Assembly group and was appointed under Vyacheslav von Plehve
.

Purishkevich was a hardline supporter of

sacerdotal autocracy. Purishkevich was hostile towards Jews, who he believed to be the "vanguard of the revolutionary movement". He wanted Jews to be deported to Kolyma. He believed that the "Kadets, socialists, the intelligentsia, the press and councils of university professors" were all under the control of Jews.[4]

Vladimir Purishkevich, c. 1914–1918

During the

carnation in his fly.[4]

When the first Russian women's congress convened in 1908, Purishkevich sent a letter to several of the participants calling it "an assembly of whores".[8][9] One of the recipients of the letter, Anna Filosofova, made the letter public and took Purishkevich to court; he was sentenced to one month in jail.[8]

Criticism of Rasputin

During

Nicolas II about Rasputin.[11]

On 19 November, Purishkevich delivered a speech in the Duma that denounced Rasputin and the conduct of the government. He compared Rasputin with the "False Dmitri", and argued that Rasputin's influence over the tsarina had made him a threat to the empire.[12] He stated that the monarchy was becoming discredited:[13][14]

The Tsar's ministers who have been turned into marionettes, marionettes whose threads have been taken firmly in hand by Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna—the evil genius of Russia and the Tsarina... who has remained a German on the Russian throne and alien to the country and its people.[15]

He concluded that "While Rasputin is alive, we cannot win".[16]

Killing of Rasputin

Basement of the Yusupov Palace on the Moika in St. Petersburg where Rasputin was murdered
Purishkevich' medical aid train in 1916

Prince

Petrograd.[19]

On the evening of 16 December 1916, the conspirators gathered in the Moika Palace and eventually killed Rasputin.

A curious policeman on duty on the other side of the

Moika
had heard the shots, rang at the door, and was sent away. Half an hour later, another policeman arrived, and Purishkevich invited him into the palace. Purishkevich told him that he had shot Rasputin and asked him to keep it quiet for the sake of the tsar.

They had planned to burn Rasputin's possessions. Sukhotin put on Rasputin's fur coat, rubber boots, and gloves. He left with Dmitri and Dr. Lazovert in Purishkevich's car,[20] which suggests that Rasputin had left the palace alive.[21] Because Purishkevich's wife refused to burn the fur coat and the boots in her small fireplace in the ambulance train, the conspirators went back to the palace with the larger items.

Yusupov and Dmitri were placed under house arrest in the Sergei Palace. The tsarina had refused to meet them but said that they could explain to her what had happened in a letter. Purishkevich assisted them and left the city to the Romanian front at ten in the evening. Because of his popularity, Purishkevich was neither punished nor exiled.[22]

Revolutionary Russia

Moika Embankment
with the former hotel "Russia"

During the February Revolution in 1917, many right-wingers were arrested but Purishkevich was tolerated by the government and so was "virtually the only former national Black Hundred leader to maintain an active political life in Russia after the tsar's downfall".[23] However, the revolution meant that Purishkevich initially had to moderate his politics. He called for the abolition of the Soviets, who were, in turn, calling for the abolition of the Duma.

In August 1917, he wanted a military dictatorship; he was arrested over the

Fyodor Viktorovich Vinberg in forming an underground monarchist organisation.[24] During the October Revolution
, he organized the "Committee for the Motherland's Salvation". He was joined by a number of officers, military cadets, and others.

At the time, Purishkevich was living in the Hotel Russia at

Petrograd.[25] He became the first person to be tried in the Smolny Institute by the first Revolutionary Tribunal.[25] He was condemned to eleven months of 'public work' and four years of imprisonment with obligatory community service and won the admiration of his fellow prisoners in the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul by his courageous bearing.[26] He was given an amnesty on May 1 after the mediation of Felix Dzerzhinsky and Nikolay Krestinsky, as he refrained from any political activity.[25] In jail, he had written a poem describing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
as 'The Trotsky Peace'.

White Russia

After his release, he moved to White Army-controlled Southern Russia. There, during the Russian Civil War he published the monarchist journal Blagovest and returned openly to his traditional political stance of support for the monarchy, a unified Russia, and opposition to the Jews. In some of the towns occupied by the Volunteer Army, he gave lectures in which he denounced the British policy towards Russia. In 1918, he formed a new political party, the People's State Party, and called for an "open fight against Jewry";[27] the party collapsed after his death.

Vladimir Purishkevich died from

Denikin's Army.[26]

Reputation

Purishkevich was described by contemporary Russian politician

blood libel against Jews.[32]

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-521-48386-5
    .
  2. ^ a b "Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich". Encyclopedia Britannica. January 28, 2024. Retrieved 28 March 2024.
  3. ^ Ronald C. Moe, Prelude to the Revolution: The Murder of Rasputin, p. 232. (Aventine Press, 2011).
  4. ^ a b c d Langer, Jack Fighting The Future: the doomed anti-revolutionary crusade of Vladimir Purishkevich Revolutionary Russia (journal) Vol. 9, No. 1 June 2006 P42
  5. ^ Weinberg, Robert (2008). "The Russian Right Responds to Revolution: Visual Depictions of Jews in the Black Hundred Press in Post-1905 Russia". Swarthmore College. 4: 17.
  6. ISBN 978-0-521-52851-1
    .
  7. ^ "William Korey: Russian Antisemitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism". Archived from the original on August 12, 2004.
  8. ^
    ISBN 963-7326-39-1. Archived
    from the original on 2023-09-24. Retrieved 2011-11-27.
  9. ISBN 978-1-57607-101-4
    .
  10. ISBN 978-1-317-37303-2
    .
  11. ^ Pim van der Meiden (1991) Raspoetin en de val van het Tsarenrijk, p. 71.
  12. ^ The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: Documents, Volume 1, p. 17 by Robert Paul Browder, Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerensky [1]
  13. ^ O. Figes (1997) A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution, p. 278. [2]
  14. ^ The Cambridge History of Russia: Volume 2, Imperial Russia, 1689-1917, p. 668 by Maureen Perrie, Dominic Lieven, Ronald Grigor Suny [3]
  15. ^ E. Radzinsky, The Rasputin File, p. 434.
  16. ^ "Tatyana Mironova. Grigori Rasputin: Belied Life – Belied Death". Archived from the original on November 10, 2013.
  17. ^ "Letters of Felix and Zenaida Yussupov - Blog & Alexander Palace Time Machine". www.alexanderpalace.org.
  18. ISBN 9781118226933
    – via Google Books.
  19. ISBN 9781118226933
    – via Google Books.
  20. ^ "Murder of Grigori Rasputin". omolenko.com.
  21. ^ J.T. Fuhrmann, p. 211.
  22. ISBN 9781118226933
    – via Google Books.
  23. ^ Langer, Jack Fighting The Future: the doomed anti-revolutionary crusade of Vladimir Purishkevich Revolutionary Russia (journal) Vol 19, No.1 June 2006 P45
  24. ^ Kellogg, Michael The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945 Cambridge University Press (2005) p44
  25. ^ a b c Andrew Kalpaschnikoff, A Prisoner of Trotsky's, 1920
  26. ^ a b Irene Zohrab, "The Liberals among the forces of the Revolution: from the unpublished papers of Harold W. Williams". New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 20, (1986), 63-64.
  27. ^ Kellogg, Michael The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945 Cambridge University Press (2005) pp102-3
  28. ^ Out of My Past: Memoirs of Count Kokovtsov, p. 170.
  29. ^ Liubosh, S. B., Russkii fashist V. M. Purishkevich, Leningrad: Byloe Publishing House, 1925
  30. ^ Shenfield, Stephen Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies and Movements Routledge, 2015, p. 31
  31. ^ "krotov.info". www.krotov.info.
  32. ^ "Семен РЕЗНИК: ВМЕСТЕ ИЛИ ВРОЗЬ? [WIN]". www.vestnik.com.

Sources

  • Vladimir Pourichkevitch (1924) Comment j'ai tué Raspoutine. Pages de Journal. J. Povolozky & Cie. Paris. Translated and published as The murder of Rasputin (1985) Ardis.
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