Ivan Belokonskii

Belokonskii, Ivan Petrovich 

Born May 25 (June 6), 1855, in Chernigov; died Feb. 7, 1931, in Kharkov. Russian social figure, historian of the zemstvo (district assembly) movement, and man of letters. He was born into a physician’s family.

Belokonskii attended lectures at the universities of Kiev and Novorossiisk (Odessa). He became close to the Narodniks (Populists) during the 1870’s and carried on propaganda in Kiev Province while working as a village teacher. In 1879, Belokonskii was arrested, and in 1880 he was exiled to Eastern Siberia. In 1886 he returned to European Russia and worked until 1901 in various zemstvos (Zhitomir, Kursk, Orel, and Kharkov). He took part in the organization called the League of Liberation (1904) and subsequently became a member of the Constitutional Democratic (Cadet) Party. Belokonskii was the author of works on the history of the zemstvo and the zemstvo movement as well as a number of memoirs and fictional works. From 1875 he began to appear in the periodical press.

WORKS

Zemstvo i konstitutsiia. Moscow, 1910. (Second edition: Zemskoe dvizhenie. Moscow, 1914.)
Dan’ vremeni: Vospominaniia, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1928.
V gody bespraviia. (Dan’ vremeni, part 2.) Moscow, 1930.