Vladimir Aleksandrovich Obruchev

Born 1836; died Jan. 30 (Feb. 12), 1912, in St. Petersburg. Participant in the Russian revolutionary movement of the 1860’s. Nobleman.

Obruchev graduated from the Academy of the General Staff in 1858. In 1859 he retired from military service and began to write for the journal Sovremennik (The Contemporary). In October 1861 he was arrested for distributing the Velikoruss proclamation. He did not reveal his ties with the revolutionary underground. Obruchev was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. In 1865 his sentence was commuted to penal settlement. He lived in Irkutsk, Verkhneural’sk, and Ufa. In 1874 he returned from exile. In 1884 he took a post in the Naval Ministry. In 1906 he retired with the rank of major general. He published his memoirs in the journal Vestnik Evropy (Journal of Europe; 1907, nos. 5–6; 1908, no. 10).