Nikolai Sukhanov

Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov (Russian: Николай Николаевич Суханов; 10 December 1882 – 29 June 1940) was a Russian Menshevik Internationalist and chronicler of the Russian Revolution.

Nikolai Sukhanov - a pseudonym, his real name was Nikolai Himmer - was born in Moscow. His father, from German descent, was a railway employee, his mother a midwife. His parents split after his birth, and his mother was exiled for seven years in a sensational court case to Siberia for bigamy; in 1898 commuted into one year prison. Himmer gave private lessons while he was at high school. Like his grandmother he was captivated by Tolstoy and Tolstoyanism. In 1900/1902 he traveled through Russia, and met with several revolutionaries (e.g. Lenin, Trotsky, Martov, and Chernov) in Paris. In 1903 he began to study Philology and Philosophy in Moscow, and joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party. In those days Sukhanov was busy with propaganda on agrarian reform and lecturing. Following his arrest in May 1904 for being in possession of illegal literature, he was given a 18-month sentence in the Taganka Prison. After he was liberated by the crowd in October 1905 he took part in the uprising in Moscow in December. Sukhanov became a contributor to Russkoe Bogatstvo (Russian Wealth) and published (legally) two books on agricultural reform. He was involved in the Socialist Revolutionary Party and argued with the leaders how to explain the Narodniks and Marxism in the right way. He was rearrested in 1911 and sentenced to exile in Archangelsk. (In the meantime his wife left him and moved to Poland with her two sons. Sukhanov remarried Galina Flaksermann) Following his release early March, and having benefited of the amnesty during the festivities of Romanov Tercentenary, he returned to St. Petersburg, where he became an editor of the radical journal Sovremennik' (Contemporary) and Letopis (Chronicle). published by Maxim Gorky. He worked under his own name for the Ministry of Agriculture. As an internationalist he opposed Russia going into war with Germany and Austria.

...
Wikipedia