Sozonov, Egor Sergeevich

Sozonov, Egor Sergeevich 

Born May 26, 1879, in the village of Petrovskoe, Urzhum District, Viatka Province, died Nov. 27, 1910, in Gornyi Zerentui, in what is now Chita Oblast. Russian revolutionary; a Socialist Revolutionary.

The son of a peasant Old Believer, who later became a lumber merchant, Sozonov was expelled from Moscow University in April 1901 for participating in the student movement and was banished from Moscow. After joining the Urals Union of Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries in Ufa, Sozonov was arrested in March 1902 and exiled to Eastern Siberia in July 1903. He escaped en route and fled abroad.

On July 15, 1904, Sozonov assassinated V. K. Pleve, the minister of internal affairs, in St. Petersburg upon assignment from a militant organization of Socialist Revolutionaries. He himself was severely wounded by a bomb explosion. Sozonov was sentenced to life at hard labor, which he served at the Nerchinsk hard labor camps. He poisoned himself in protest against the corporal punishment of two fellow exiles.

REFERENCE

Pis’ma Egora Sozonova k rodnym, 1895–1910. Moscow, 1925.