He was the elder brother fellow Bolshevik revolutionary Yakov Dubrovisnky His widowed mother, Lyubov, moved with all four boys to Kursk, then returned in 1895 to Orel.

[1] As a schoolboy in Kursk, Dubrovinsky joined a populist circle modelled on Narodnaya Volya, the group that assassinated the Tsar Alexander II, but later became a Marxist.

In 1902 he was moved to Astrakhan, where he made contact with the illegal newspaper Iskra, of which Lenin was the main organiser, and acted as its local distributor.

The Bolsheviks sent him to the naval base in Kronstadt, where, on 23 October, he addressed a crowd of thousands, who agreed resolution calling for better conditions for servicemen, and political demands for the overthrow of the monarchy and the creation of a democratic republic.

In February 1908 he joined Lenin in Geneva, where he was part of a triumvirate, which also included Alexander Bogdanov, running the Bolshevik publication, Vperyod (Forward).

He returned to Russian jurisdiction, hoping to unite the various illegal Marxist groups, but was arrested in Warsaw in November 1908, and was deported to Solvychegodsk, in north Russia, in iron fetters that left deep wounds in his legs.

On 1 June, he drowned in the Yenisei River - ironically around the time when he stood a chance of being released under an amnesty to mark the Romanov Tercentenary.