Vasilii Semenovich Pankratov

Who was Vasilii Semenovich Pankratov?

Born Jan. 26 (Feb. 7), 1864, in the village of Alekseevskoe, now in Moscow Oblast; died Mar. 5, 1925, in Leningrad. Russian worker and revolutionary. Involved in the revolutionary movement from 1879.

A member of the workers’ organization People’s Will (Narod-naia volia) beginning in 1881, Pankratov conducted propaganda among the workers of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, and other cities. When arrested in Kiev on Mar. 4, 1884, he put up armed resistance. At the Trial of the Twelve, held in November 1884, he was sentenced to 20 years at hard labor. He spent 14 years in the Shlissel’burg Fortress and in 1898 was banished to Yakutia.

Pankratov escaped from exile in 1905 and joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR’s), participating in the December armed uprising in Moscow. He was again exiled to Yakutsk in 1907, returning to St. Petersburg in 1912. In July 1917 he published in the newspaper Zhivoe slovo an article slandering V. I. Lenin. Pankratov was commissar “for the protection of the former tsar” under the bourgeois Provisional Government.

Works:

Zhizn’ v Shlissel’burgskoi kreposti (1884–1898). Petrograd, 1922.

Vospominaniia. Moscow, 1923.

Stsarem v Tobol’ske. Leningrad, 1925.

Famous Quotes:

• "Alexandra Fedorovna pronounced Russian words with a heavy accent, and it was noticebale that speaking Russian was hard for her ...[she] pronounced each phrase with difficulty, and with a German accent — just like a foreigner who had learned the Russian language from books, and not from practice."