Kamkov, Boris

Kamkov, Boris Davidovich 

(pseudonym of B. D. Kats). Born June 3, 1885, in the village of Kobyl’nia, in present-day Floreshti Raion, Moldavian SSR; died in 1938. One of the leaders of the left Socialist Revolutionaries (Left SR’s).

Kamkov lived in exile in France and Sweden during World War I and took an internationalist position on the war. He returned to Russia after the February Revolution of 1917 and was elected to the Petrograd committee of the SR’s; he opposed the war and came out for the transfer of power to the Soviets. Kamkov was elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. At the First Congress of the Party of Left SR’s, held in Petrograd Nov. 19–28 (Dec. 2–11), 1917, Kamkov was elected to the Central Committee of the party. In late February 1918 he came out against the Brest peace with Germany and for an end to the alliance of the Left SR’s with the Bolsheviks. He was one of the initiators and organizers of the Left SR revolt in Moscow on July 6–7, 1918. Kamkov led underground groups of his party that continued the struggle against Soviet power. He was sentenced by a military tribunal to three years imprisonment for anti-Soviet activity. In his last years he worked as a statistician in Voronezh.