Ustrialov, Nikolai Vasilevich

Ustrialov, Nikolai Vasil’evich 

(pen name, P. Surmin). Born 1890; died 1938. Russian political figure and publicist. Prominent member of the Constitutional Democrats (Cadets) from 1917. An ideologist of smenovekhovstvo (“Change of Landmarks” movement).

Ustrialov graduated from the faculty of law at Moscow University in 1913. Between 1916 and 1918 he was a privatdocent at Moscow University and the University of Perm’. He contributed to Russian periodicals. From 1918 to 1920, Ustrialov was chairman of both the eastern division of the Central Committee of the Constitutional Democratic Party and the Russian Press Bureau. He emigrated after the fall of the Kolchak regime.

In 1920, Ustrialov put forward the program of the “Change of Landmarks” movement. He counted on Soviet Russia’s developing into a bourgeois state. Ustrialov spoke out against fascism in his journalistic work. From 1920 to 1934 he was a professor at the University of Harbin. After returning to the Soviet Union in 1935, Ustrialov worked as a teacher.