Porfirii Voinaralskii

Voinaral’skii, Porfirii Ivanovich 

Born in 1844; died July 17 (29), 1898, in Kupiansk in present-day Kharkov Oblast. Russian revolutionary and Narodnik (Populist). Descended from the nobility of Penza Province.

In 1861, Voinaral’skii was expelled from Moscow University for his participation in student disturbances, and in February 1862 he was banished to Glazov in Viatka Province. He remained under strict police surveillance until 1873. In the spring of 1874, he was one of the organizers of the “going to the people.” Shoemaking and joining workshops were established in Moscow with his financial backing in order to teach trades to those who were “going to the people,” and it was Voinaral’skii who financed the operation of I. N. Myshkin’s illegal press. He established several revolutionary circles in Penza, Samara, and Saratov provinces. He was arrested in 1874, and in the Trial of the 193 he was sentenced to ten years at hard labor. His term was spent in the Novoborisoglebsk hard-labor prison in Kharkov Province and, later, in Kara and Yakutia. He contributed to the Siberian press. In 1897 he returned to Central Russia.

REFERENCES

Filippov, R. V. Iz istorii narodnicheskogo dvizheniia na pervom etape “khozhdeniia v narod,” 1863-1874. Petrozavodsk, 1967.
Itenberg, B. S. Dvizhenie revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva (Narodnicheskie kruzhki i “khozhdenie v narod” v 70-kh godakh XIX v). Moscow, 1965.