Nikolay Bauman

Nikolay Ernestovich Bauman
Bauman as a student in the late 19th century.
Born	May 29 [O.S. May 17] 1873 Kazan, Russian Empire
Died	October 31 [O.S. October 18] 1905 Moscow, Russian Empire
Nationality	Russian
Occupation	Professional revolutionary Bolshevik politician

Nikolay Ernestovich Bauman (Russian: Никола́й Эрне́стович Ба́уман, translit. Nikoláy Ernéstovich Báuman) (May 29 [O.S. May 17] 1873 – October 31 [O.S. October 18] 1905) was a professional Russian revolutionary of the Bolshevik party.

His murder by reactionary street crowds upon his release from Taganka Prison in 1905 made him a martyr of the Revolution, and later the Soviet Union.

He was born to the owner of a wallpaper and carpentry workshop, and a family of German origins. He attended the 2nd Kazan Secondary School, but dropped out in the 7th grade because of disagreements with his teachers. From 1891 to 1895 he was a student at the Kazan Veterinary Institute. During his student years he was fascinated by illegal populist and Marxist literature, and participated in various underground workers' groups. After receiving his diploma as a veterinary doctor, Bauman began work at the village оf Novye Burasy in the Saratov Region and dreamt of becoming involved in revolutionary propaganda there. However, being known of by the police, and wishing to achieve broad revolutionary activity, in the fall of 1896 he left for Saint Petersburg.

From 1896 to 1897 he worked in Petersburg, serving a term in the "Petersburg Alliance for the Liberation of the Working Class." In 1897 Bauman was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he was kept in solitary confinement for 22 months. During his stay in the fortress, he was astonishingly allowed to read Karl Marx's Das Kapital.

Bauman was fond of practical jokes, often taking a quite malicious character. At one point he drove a party comrade to suicide, when he drew a vicious cartoon of her as the Virgin Mary with a baby in her womb, with a question mark asking 'who the baby looked like'; the sensitive party member hanged herself as a result. In the wake of this scandal many Social Democrats wanted Bauman expelled from the party, among them Julius Martov, but he was saved by Lenin, who claimed he was a 'good party worker', which in his view was all that mattered. The controversy divided the party, and has been described as 'one of the many personal clashes which came to define the ethical distinctions' between the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions after 1903.