N Sukhanov

Sukhanov, N 

(pseudonym of Nikolai Nikolaevich Gimmer). Born Dec. 10, 1882, in Moscow; died June 29, 1940. Russian revolutionary, economist, and publicist. Member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party from 1903 and a Menshevik from 1917.

The son of a civil servant, Sukhanov attended the University of Moscow. Working in the field of literary research, he contributed to the journals Russkoe bogalslvo and Sovremennik. In his articles on politics and economics he attempted to combine Narodni-chestvo (Populism) and Marxism. During World War I he declared himself an internationalist and contributed to the journal Letopis’.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Sukhanov was a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd soviet and participated in the first convocation of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. He sided with the Menshevik internationalists until 1920 and was an editor of the newspaper Novaia zhizn’. He opposed Lenin’s course of pursuing the victory of the socialist revolution.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Sukhanov worked in Soviet economic institutions. He wrote Notes on the Revolution (vols. 1–7, 1922–23), a work severely criticized by V. I. Lenin in his article “Our Revolution” (see Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 45, pp. 378–82). In 1931, Sukhanov was convicted for belonging to an underground Menshevik organization.