Nikolai Sudzilovsky

Who was Nikolai Sudzilovsky?

Nikolai Konstantinovich Sudzilovsky was a revolutionary and scientist.

Sudzilovsky was born in Mogilev to a noble family. He entered the St. Petersburg University law department but dropped out on the next year and entered medical department of the Kiev University where he did not finish his studies. He began to get involved in political activity being one of the organisers of the Kiev commune, a left-wing student organisation in 1873-1874. Getting a job of medical assistant at the Nikolayev prison, he tried to arrange mass escape of the prisoners, but his plot failed and he had to flee from Russia escaping arrest in 1875.

In 1876 under the pseudonym Nicholas Russel, Sudzilovsky took part in the Bulgarian April Uprising against the Ottoman Empire. In 1877 he graduated from medical department of Bucharest university. Russel was one of the organisers of the socialist movement in Romania, published a socialist paper, and carried out socialist propaganda among the Russian troops during the Russo-Turkish war. Romanian authorities expelled him from the country.