Arkady Kots

Who was Arkady Kots?

Arkady Yakovlevich Kots was a Russian socialist poet of Jewish descent.

Arkady Kots graduated from a mining school in Horlivka and worked at the Moscow and Donets Coal Basins. In 1897-1902, Kots resided in Paris, where he graduated from a mining institute and established contact with the revolutionary emigres.

In 1902, he published two poems which would go down into the history of proletarian poetry and movement in general. The first one was a Russian translation of The Internationale, the most famous socialist song and one of the most widely recognized songs in the world. It was published anonymously in a Russian emigre magazine Listki Zhizni, a companion publication to the Zhizn magazine. The other verse was called The Proletarian Song, which would become quite popular.

In 1903, Arkady Kots joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and carried out party assignments in Mariupol and Odessa. In 1907-1914, Kots did not belong to any political party. In 1907, a publishing house Nash Golos published a collection of verses by Arkady Kots named Proletarian Songs, which would be immediately confiscated by the tsarist authorities. Kots is known to have translated a play by Octave Mirbeau called Les Mauvais Bergers and published a number of political brochures. In 1914-1920, he sided with the Mensheviks.