Kamo

Who was Kamo?

Kamo, real name Semeno Arshakovitch Ter-Petrossian, was an Armenian Bolshevik revolutionary from Georgia, and an early companion to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. From 1903–1912, Kamo, a master of disguise, carried out a number of militant operations on behalf of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, mostly in Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire. He is best known for his central role in the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, organised by Bolshevik leaders to raise funds for their party activities. For his militant activities he was arrested in Berlin in 1907 but simulated insanity both in German and later Russian prisons, eventually escaping from prison and fleeing the country. He was recaptured in 1912 after another attempted armed robbery and sentenced to death. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment as part of the celebrations of the Romanov dynasty tricentennial.

Kamo was released after the February 1917 Russian Revolution. He died in 1922 after being hit by a truck while riding a bicycle in Tiflis. Kamo was buried and had a monument erected in his honor in Pushkin Gardens, near Yerevan Square, but this monument was later removed during Stalin's rule and his remains moved to another location.