16 Facts About Mark Natanson

Mark Natanson's parents died while he was still young and so he was brought up by his uncle.

Mark Natanson graduated from the Kaunas men's grammar school in 1868, studied in St Petersburg at the Medical and Surgical Academy and then at the Institute of Agriculture.

Mark Natanson organized the escape abroad of Peter Kropotkin, a comrade from the Circle of Tchaikovsky.

Mark Natanson set himself the goal of uniting the populist, social democratic and liberal movements in the Russian liberation movement.

Mark Natanson's merits in organizing the construction are confirmed by the fact that on June 17,1899, at the gala dinner in honor of the launch of the icebreaker "Baikal", there was a toast pronounced in honor of the political exile.

However, the People's Rights Party proved to be a short-lived venture, as in 1894, Mark Natanson was arrested again and banished to eastern Siberia for ten years.

Mark Natanson remained an active revolutionary even in Siberian exile, maintaining the party treasury and coordinating various organisational tasks.

The successful assassination of the Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve, Mark Natanson began to support the terrorist tactics of the Socialist Revolutionaries.

Mark Natanson still held a reserved position in relation to the party's terrorist tactics.

Mark Natanson sided with the 'Internationalists' and attended the international socialist peace conferences such as the Zimmerwald Conference and one at Kienthal in Switzerland, signing the conference's manifestoes on behalf of the SR Internationalists.

Mark Natanson became one of the most prominent leaders of the left wing of the SRs, which became increasingly disenchanted with the Provisional Government and with Alexander Kerensky and sharply criticised the defensive position of the SR central committee.

Mark Natanson advocated the "deepening" of the revolution, the transfer of all land to peasants and of power to the soviets.

Mark Natanson opposed this course, fearing that a defeat of the Soviet government would spell the end of the revolution and usher in a counter-revolution.

Mark Natanson founded the Party of Revolutionary Communism, which supported the Bolsheviks and eventually merged with the Communist Party of the USSR.

Mark Natanson was a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

In July 1919, Mark Natanson died in Switzerland from complications of thromboembolism and purulent pneumonia after a surgical operation for a prostate tumor.