Gregory Gershuni

Gregory Gershuni

Gregory Gershuni, the son of Jewish peasants, was born in Kovno in 1870. He trained as a pharmacist at Kiev University and in 1898 opened his own bacteriological laboratory in Minsk.

Gershuni was a socialist and he was a founder member of the Workers' Party for the Political Liberation of Russia. He was arrested by the Okhrana in 1900 but was eventually released.

In 1901 Gershuni joined with Catherine Breshkovskaya, Victor Chernov, Alexander Kerensky and Evno Azef to establish the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

Gershuni became head of the SR Combat Organization and was responsible for planning the assassination of the Minister of the Interior, D. S. Sipyagin. The following year he arranged the assassination of N. M. Bogdanovich, the Governor of Ufa.

Gershuni was unaware that his deputy, Evno Azef, was in the pay of the Okhrana. In 1904 Azef secretly provided the secret police with the information needed to arrest and try Gershuni with terrorism. Edward H. Judge, the author of Plehve: Repression and Reform in Imperial Russia (1983), has argued: "Azef sat in a very dangerous position, especially after Gershuni's arrest, and he had to think first of his own safety. A continual series of arrests, and a long train of assassination attempts gone awry, could only help convince his SR colleagues that they had a traitor in their midst. If he were found out, his game would be over, and so, most probably, would be his life. On the other hand, if he could successfully plan and accomplish the murder of Plehve, his position among the SRs would be secured. Azef had little love for Plehve: as a Jew, he could not help but resent the Kishinev pogrom and the minister's reputed role."

At his trial Gershuni was sentenced to death, a sentence subsequently commuted to life imprisonment and hard labour. In 1905 he escaped from Akatui Prison in Eastern Siberia. After travelling via China and the USA, Gershuni arrived back in Europe in February, 1907.

In exile Gershuni continued to argue for a campaign of terror in order to overthrow the Tsar in Russia. He strongly defended Evno Azef against claims being made that he was a traitor.

Gregory Gershuni died of tuberculosis in Zurich in 1908.

Primary Sources

(1) Victor Serge, Year One of the Russian Revolution (1930)

The SR Battle Organization was founded by Gregory Gershuni in 1902; its first act, in the same year, was the execution of the Minister of Education Sipyagin by the student Balmashev (who was later hanged). On the day after the murder, the SR party published under a similar verdict. The arrest of Gershuni, who was delivered to the police by Azef, caused the latter's promotion to the top leadership of the terrorist detachment. A man named Boris Savinkov, for whom terrorism was a vocation and whose courage was indomitable, now found himself under the orders of the agent-provacateur. In 1904 the Prime Minister, Plehve, fell mutilated by Yegor Sazonov's bomb. Sazonov had organized the assassination on instructions from Azef.

(2) Edward H. Judge, Plehve: Repression and Reform in Imperial Russia (1983)

Azef sat in a very dangerous position, especially after Gershuni's arrest, and he had to think first of his own safety. A continual series of arrests, and a long train of assassination attempts gone awry, could only help convince his SR colleagues that they had a traitor in their midst. If he were found out, his game would be over, and so, most probably, would be his life. On the other hand, if he could successfully plan and accomplish the murder of Plehve, his position among the SRs would be secured. Azef had little love for Plehve: as a Jew, he could not help but resent the Kishinev pogrom and the minister's reputed role.