1. Lev Grigorievich Deutsch, known as Leo Deutsch was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and one of four founding members of Russia's Marxist Organisation, the precursor of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
16 Facts About Leo Deutsch
1. 2.
Lev Grigorievich Deutsch was born September 25,1855, in Tulchin, in the Podolia Governorate of the Russian Empire, the son of a Jewish merchant father and a peasant mother.
3.
Leo Deutsch avoided arrest, unlike many of the participants, but returned, disillusioned in the summer of 1875 and volunteered to join the infantry, hoping to be sent to the Balkans to fight the Turks, but in February 1876, he was implicated in helping a revolutionary named Semyon Lurie, one of the defendants at the Trial of the 193 to escape from Kiev prison, and deserted, to avoid a court martial.
4.
Leo Deutsch joined an illegal group known as the Kiev buntari.
5.
In June 1876, Leo Deutsch was living illegally in Elisavetgrad when a former student named Gorinovich sought to join his group.
6.
Leo Deutsch believed that he had gained his release by denouncing others, and was an active police spy, and resolved to kill him.
7.
In 1900, Leo Deutsch made a dramatic escape from Siberia, through Japan, the US, Liverpool, London, and Paris, to rejoin the Emancipation of Labour League in Switzerland in November 1901.
8.
Leo Deutsch was present as an observer at the second congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903 when it split into its Bolshevik and Menshevik factions.
9.
Leo Deutsch sided the Mensheviks - Martov, Axelrod, Zasulich, Leon Trotsky et al.
10.
From October 1915 to September 1916, Leo Deutsch edited a monthly newspaper in New York City called Svobodnoe Slovo.
11.
In 1917, Leo Deutsch returned to Petrograd and joined George Plekhanov in editing Edinstvo.
12.
Leo Deutsch wrote his memoirs and edited a volume of documents associated with the Emancipation of Labour group.
13.
Leo Deutsch adopted a "defencist" position during the rule of the Provisional Government and supported Russia's war efforts.
14.
Leo Deutsch died on August 5,1941, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
15.
Leo Deutsch never married, though his memoirs show that he had very friendly and affectionate relations with the wives of other revolutionaries, such as Pavel Axelrod.
16.
Leo Deutsch successfully lobbied the editors of Iskra to allow Trotsky to stay in Europe, rather than be assigned to illegal work in Russia, with a high risk that he would be arrested.