Moishe Tokar

Who was Moishe Tokar?

Moishe Tokar was a Jewish anarchist who attempted to assassinate the Russian general Sergei Gershelman.

During the 1905 Russian Revolution, Tokar lived in Warsaw where he was a member of an anarchist collective of Jewish workers known as International. His daring in propaganda of the deed won him renown within the Russian anarchist movement. After escaping arrest by the police in Warsaw, he became a fugitive before being captured and imprisoned in the city's notorious Citadel prison. Possessing no identifying documents, he defied torture and managed to withhold his name from the authorities. In 1907 he escaped, fleeing first to Paris and then to London, where he became an associate of the revolutionary, Judith Goodman, and anarchist theorist, Rudolf Rocker.

Finding life in both cities too tame, he returned from London to Paris with the intention of returning to Russia. In Paris he met a group of similarly disposed young Russian illegalists, with whom he planned to rob a Parisian bank, but the group were betrayed by one of their own and arrested. Under the influence of Prime Minister Clemenceau, who was sympathetic to their youthful idealism and unaware of their criminal intent, the group were not imprisoned but rather were ordered to leave Paris on the next train.