Sergei Melgunov

Who was Sergei Melgunov?

Sergei Petrovich Melgunov was a Russian historian, publicist and politician best known for his opposition to the Soviet government and his numerous works on the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War.

Melgunov was born in Moscow to an old aristocratic family. His mother was Polish, née Gruszecka. Having graduated from Moscow University in 1904, he began his political and scholarly career in Imperial Russia. He became a member of the Russian Constitutional Democratic party in 1906 and joined the People’s Socialist Party in 1907. In 1911, Melgunov established a publishing house Zadruga where he published over 500 books and a journal Golos minuvshego. After the 1917 Bolshevik October Revolution, he became an active opponent of Lenin’s government and joined the anti-Soviet Union of Revival of Russia, which advocated an armed overthrow of the Bolshevik regime.

He was arrested and sentenced to death in 1919, then reprieved, with the sentence commuted to imprisonment. He was released in 1921 and forced into exile in 1922. Melgunov finally settled in Paris, where he continued his historical research and edited several émigré journals.