Nikolai Tchaikovsky

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nikolai Tchaikovsky

Born 7 January/26 December 1851/1850
Vyatka, Russia
Died 30 April 1926
Harrow, England

Nikolai Vasilyevich Tchaikovsky (7 January 1851 [O.S. 26 December 1850]30 April 1926) was a Russian revolutionary.

Tchaikovsky was born in Vyatka, and while studying in St. Petersburg joined a radical student group which would later be known as the Circle of Tchaikovsky after its most famous member. The group advocated revolutionary socialist ideals which formed the basis of the Narodnik movement. Tchaikovsky disagreed with the circle over the implementation of ideas and in the 1870s moved to the United States to set up a socialist utopian commune in Kansas. The commune did not succeed and he moved to London to raise money and publish revolutionary literature.

He returned to Russia in 1905 to work in the cooperative movement. He opposed the Bolsheviks politically and when they took power he was the head of the White government in Arkhangelsk during the Russian Civil War. With the failure of the white movement Tchaikovsky moved to Paris eventually dying in Harrow, England in 1926.