Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich

Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich
Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich in 1919
Born	Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich (1873-06-28)28 June 1873 Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	14 July 1955(1955-07-14) (aged 82) Moscow, Russian SFSR
Occupation	Revolutionary, politician, writer, researcher, historian

Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich (Russian: Владимир Дмитриевич Бонч-Бруевич; sometimes spelled Bonch-Bruevich; in Polish Boncz-Brujewicz; 28 June [O.S. 16 June] 1873  – 14 July 1955) was a Soviet politician, historian, writer and Old Bolshevik (from 1895). He was Vladimir Lenin's personal secretary. He was a brother of Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich.

Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich was born in Moscow to a land surveyor family of Polish descent who came from the nobility of the Mogilev province. Between 1884–1889 he studied at the Moscow Institute of Surveying and graduated from the school of land surveying. He returned to Moscow in 1892 and entered the "Moscow Workers' Union" and distributed illegal literature. Since 1895 he was active in the social-democratic circles. In 1896 he emigrated to Switzerland and organized shipments of Russian revolutionary literature and printing equipment and became an active member of Iskra.

One of Bonch-Bruyevich's research interests were Russia's dissenting religious minorities ("sects"), which were usually persecuted to various extent by both the established Orthodox Church and the Tsarist government. In the late 1890s, he collaborated with Vladimir Chertkov and Leo Tolstoy, in particular in the arrangement of the Doukhobors' emigration to Canada in 1899. Bonch-Bruyevich sailed with the Doukhobors, and spent a year with them in Canada. During that time, he was able to record much of their orally transmitted tradition, in particular the Doukhobor "psalms" (hymns). He published them later (1909) as "The Doukhobor Book of Life" (Russian: «», Zhivotnaya Kniga Dukhobortsev).

Between 1903–1905 he was the head of the expedition of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (Geneva) and one of the founders of the archive. In 1905 he returned to Russia and worked in the newspaper "New Life." In 1905 he participated in the preparation for an armed uprising in Saint Petersburg and organized the underground storage of weapons.