By Alex Gordon
HAIFA, Israel — In June 1917, in the capital of the Russian Empire, Petrograd, formerly St. Petersburg, the poet Leonid Kannegiesser wrote a poem in which he glorified the chairman of the Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky, comparing his idol to the Messiah.
Kannegiesser was born into a wealthy and cultured family of St. Petersburg Jews in 1896. The February Revolution equalized Jews with other nationalities, and Kannegiesser became a cadet at the Artillery School in order to serve as an officer. He went to defend the Provisional Government on the night of Oct. 25-26,1917. His idol Kerensky was in danger. Kannegiesser rushed to defend the “Messiah,” but the Bolsheviks won. On Aug. 21, 1918, the Cheka (the first of a succession of Soviet secret-police organizations) shot Kannegiesser’s friend from the Artillery School, the officer Vladimir Pereltzweig, on charges of conspiracy against Soviet power. The order of execution was signed by the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Moisei Uritsky.
On Aug. 30, 1918, Kannegiesser put on a military-style leather sports jacket worn by cadets, left the house, rode his bicycle, and went to the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, in the Petrograd government building on Palace Square. Having stopped his bicycle at the entrance, he went into the doorway, where there was only a doorman, who said that the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Moisei Uritsky, was not yet at work. At 10.20 a.m. a car drove up and the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka went quickly to the elevator. Kannegiesser, who was sitting on the windowsill, stood up, put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a gun and from a distance of six or seven paces killed Uritsky. In October 1918, Kannegiesser was executed. Who did Kannegiser kill and why?
Moisei Uritsky was born in Cherkassy in 1873 into a Jewish merchant family. He received a Jewish upbringing and did not know Russian until he was 14, but learned it himself and managed to graduate from gymnasium. In 1897 he completed his studies at the law department of Kiev University. In 1898 he became a member of the RSDLP (Russian Social Democratic Labor Party). In 1903 he joined the Mensheviks. And in August 1917, on his return from exile, was elected a member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) ((b) ̶ Bolsheviks). Uritsky was appointed commissar of the Commission on Elections to the Constituent Assembly. After the dissolution of the Assembly in January 1918 the name of Uritsky was most associated with the anti-democratic act of dispersing the Russian parliament.
People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs Anatoly Lunacharski, in an essay on the memory of Urutsky wrote: “How was this miracle of transformation of the Lukyanovka prison in Kiev into a commune accomplished? And the fact is that the prison was ruled not so much by its chief as by the head of the political prisoners — Moisei Solomonovich Uritsky. At that time, he wore a big black beard and constantly sucked on a small pipe. Phlegmatic and imperturbable, like a bosun on a long voyage, he walked about the prison with his characteristic gait of a young bear, knew everything, was quick everywhere, impressed everybody, and was a benefactor to some, an unpleasant but unconquerable authority to others. He dominated the prison authorities precisely because of his quiet strength, which imperiously highlighted his spiritual superiority. […] And one should have seen our ‘commissar over the Constituent Assembly’ in all those stormy days! I understand that all these ‘democrats’ with pompous phrases on their lips about right, freedom, etc., hated with burning hatred the little round man who looked at them from the black circles of his pince-nez with ironic coldness, dispelling all their illusions with his sober smile alone and embodying with every gesture the domination of revolutionary force over revolutionary phrase (that is, the domination of dictatorship over democracy. ̶ A.G.)! […] ‘There is something fatal in Uritsky!’ — I heard from a rightist Socialist-Revolutionary. […] He was the worst enemy in Petrograd of the thieves and robbers of imperialism of all stripes and all varieties. […] The common people also hated him, for whom he was the embodiment of Bolshevik terror and of revolutionary duty.”
The writer Mark Aldanov (Landau), who knew Kannegiser and Uritsky, characterized the latter in his essay The Murder of Uritsky as follows: “I have seen him. I still remember him as a short, duck-like figure, with legs as crooked as from English illness, a round face without a beard or moustache, a neat parting which had been smeared with something, and a huge pince-nez on his huge nose like a mushroom. He looked like a hotel clerk, who had already saved up some good money, and was thinking of having his own rooms for visitors, or like a loan shark, who read a left-wing paper and held to a leading view. He looked extremely intelligent, and it was quite clear at once that all the questions that existed, had existed, and were possible in life, had long been answered by Uritsky in the most advanced and intelligent pamphlets; consequently, his face was stamped with a bluntly ironic self-righteous expression, once and for all. […] I. Tsereteli (the leader of Mensheviks) told me that on him Uritsky made an impression of a very gray and limited man.”
In March 1918 Uritsky was appointed chairman of the Petrograd Cheka. The new government was impressed by the fact that Uritsky was a lawyer, but instead of practicing law, he spent his time in prison and in exile. It took a lawyer to commit lawlessness. Aldanov writes: “The life of Uritsky was solid prose. And suddenly everything fell at once: power, a huge real power over the lives of millions of people, power not constrained by laws or forms of trial ̶ nothing but ‘revolutionary conscience’ ̶ huge limitless funds in the staff of explicit and secret officers, the entire apparatus of the state investigation. […] He had famous writers asking for a pass to leave the city! He had great princes imprisoned! And all this in the face of history! All this for socialism!”
Uritsky’s name appeared on all the execution orders during the five months of his tenure as chairman of the Cheka. However, the conference of the Cheka in Moscow on July 12, 1918, expressed dissatisfaction with the “liberalism” of Uritsky. Perhaps Uritsky would soon face resignation for not being bloody enough.
Uritsky was, according to Churchill’s classification from the article “Zionism Against Bolshevism (1920),” an “international Jew.” The article states, “International Jews are the source of various plots. The members of this organization of miscreants did not come largely from the most affluent part of the population of the countries where the persecution of the Jews took place. Most of them, if not all, have departed from the faith of their ancestors and have crossed out of their minds all hope of making the world a better place.” Uritsky, like other “international Jews,” was alienated from the customs and traditions of the Jewish people.
The Dutch-American sociologist Ernest van den Haag wrote: “While very few Jews are radicals, very many radicals are Jews. Out of 100 Jews, 5 may be radicals, but out of 10 radicals, probably 5 are Jews. Thus, it is wrong to say that very many Jews are radicals, but it is right to say that a disproportionate number of radicals are Jews.” The volcanic activity of the international Jewish radicals screened the entire Jewish people and made them think that the radicals represented all of Jewry. With his complete indifference and contempt for the Jewish people, Uritsky was outwardly a typical Jew, speaking with a Yiddish accent. His facial features and gestures were typical of the Jews from whom he distanced himself. He, like the other “international Jews,” symbolized coup, violence and radicalism and radiated hatred for Jews.
Although hatred for Uritsky filled the hearts of many people, his murderer was a loner. Aldanov quoted from Essays on the activities of the Petrograd Cheka published in the 1920s: “During the interrogation, Kannegiesser stated that he killed Uritsky not by order of the Party or any organization but out of his own motives, wanting to avenge the arrest of the officers and the execution of his friend Pereltzweig whom he had known for about 10 years.” Kannegiesser did not go down in the history of Russian literature, did not have time to become a significant poet. He became a terrorist. At the investigation he said: “I am a Jew. I killed a Jewish vampire, who drank the blood of the Russian people drop by drop. I know what awaits me, but I tried to show the Russian people that for us Uritsky is not a Jew. He is a renegade. I killed him in the hope of restoring the good name of Russian Jews.”
Kannigiesser succeeded: He killed the executioner, but he failed because his speech on behalf of the Jewish people wasn’t convincing. Uritsky became one of the main Jewish symbols of the bloody repression of Bolshevism. Kannegiesser did not become the Jewish symbol of the liberation of Russia from the Jewish vampire. Uritsky’s deeds were put to the Jews to blame for Russia. The act of his murderer did not whitewash Russian Jewry, did not destroy the belief in the collective guilt of the Jewish people, out of a desire to remove which Kannegiesser acted. Kannegiesser did not stop the terror, but intensified it. On September 5, 1918, the Red Terror was officially proclaimed. Hundreds of people were executed in retaliation for the murder of Uritsky. In the calculations of the antisemites, the number of Jews, representatives of the Soviet government, is listed, and the number of Jews, its opponents, is absent. The Jews were blamed for the red terror of Uritsky and for the red terror, the result of Kannegiesser’s actions against Uritsky. Kannegiesser put his life on the hopeless task in Russia of “restoring the good name of Russian Jews,” a name that did not exist.
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Alex Gordon is a native of Kiev, Ukraine, and graduate of the Kiev State University and Haifa Technion (Doctor of Science, 1984). Immigrated to Israel in 1979. Full Professor (Emeritus) of Physics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education. Author of 9 books and about 600 articles in paper and online, was published in 79 journals in 14 countries in Russian, Hebrew, English, French, and German.