Virgilii Shantser

(party pseudonym, Marat). Born Sept. 21 (Oct. 3), 1867, in Odessa; died Jan. 29 (Feb. 11), 1911, in Moscow. Figure in the Russian revolutionary movement.

Shantser was the son of an engineer. In the late 1880’s, while a student at a Gymnasium in Nikolaev, he became associated with supporters of the People’s Will. He graduated in 1899 from the University of Iur’ev (previously Dorpat, now Tartu), where he took part in Social Democratic student circles.

In 1901 he undertook party work in Moscow and was, as a result, exiled to Eastern Siberia. After the Second Congress of the RSDLP (1903), Shantser became a Bolshevik. In 1904 he was made a member of the Moscow committee of the RSDLP. In 1905 the Central Committee of the RSDLP named him its representative for the central industrial region. In the same year he became a leader of the Moscow committee of the RSDLP and an editor of the newspaper Rabochii. He took part in the preparations for the December Armed Uprising of 1905 in Moscow.

Exiled to Eniseisk Province in 1906, Shantser escaped in the same year and became a member of the Omsk committee of the RSDLP and, subsequently, of the St. Petersburg committee. At the Fifth (London) Congress of the RSDLP, he was elected to the Bolshevik Center. Shantser was arrested in 1907 and exiled to Siberia, where he continued his revolutionary activities. Exiled in 1908 to Turukhansk Krai, he escaped again and went abroad.

In Paris, in June 1909, Shantser took part in the conference of the enlarged editorial board of Proletarii. He joined the otzovisty (recallers) and in December became a member of the antiparty Vpered Group. Seriously ill, Shantser returned to Russia in 1910.