Post-independence and Cold War Contemporary history Abaninath Mukherji (Bengali: অবনীনাথ মুখার্জি, Russian: Абанинатх Трайлович Мукерджи,[a] 3 June 1891 – 28 October 1937) was an Indian communist and émigré based in the Soviet Union who co-founded the Communist Party of India (Tashkent group).

[2] After leaving school, he moved to Ahmedabad, where he trained as a weaver, and in 1910 he was employed as an assistant weaving master at the Bangla Laxmi Cotton Mills.

In September 1915, while on his return journey to India, he was arrested in Singapore and incarcerated at the Fort Canning prison there, where he remained until he escaped in the autumn of 1917.

[3] The exact details of his escape are unclear, but he told his friend Suniti Kumar Chatterji that he was assisted by a group of sympathetic Irish soldiers.

[4] Mukherji managed to reach Java in the Dutch East Indies, where he stayed until the end of 1919, living under the name of Dar Shaheer.

[9] After the founding of CPI, Roy returned to Moscow whilst Mukherji was put in charge of the Indian Military School, with the task of training armed forces to fight British colonialism.

[10] The following year, 1921, Mukherji went to Moscow to attend the Third Congress of the Communist International as a delegate with a consultative vote.

[11] In 1922, Roy and Mukherji together wrote the book India in Transition, a Marxist analysis of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which the Communist International published in four languages in 1922.

Mukherji helped Chettiar with his efforts to form the Labour Kisan Party of Hindustan and to draw up its manifesto.

[19] Mukherji fell victim to the Great Purge by Joseph Stalin in the late 1930s,[19][16] but his death was only acknowledged by the Soviet Union after 1955.

[10] In 1920, while in Russia, Mukherji met Rosa Fitingov, who was then an assistant to one of Lenin's private secretaries, Lydia Fotieva.