The Fate of a Russian Bebel: Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov, 1905-1940

Abstract

The former worker-revolutionary Semen Kanatchikov ended his autobiography,

From the Story of My Life, with his departure from Saratov at the onset of the 1905 Revolution. "I left for Moscow to face the revolutionary storm," he wrote. "There I chose a new specialization-I became a professional revolutionary. " When my translation of that work appeared in 1986, there was little information available with which to reconstruct Kanatchikov 's life between the time when his own account broke off and his death at the age of 61 in 1940. My brief "Postscript," barely four printed pages, gave only a thumbnail account of the highlights of his later career, and concluded with the speculation that something went awry for Kanatchikov, now an "Old Bolshevik," around 1936, though I was still somewhat hopeful that he died a natural death.