Peter Palchinsky

He developed an early interest in science which led him to enroll as a student at the Mining Institute in Saint Petersburg in 1893.

Because there was no hard evidence to convince the Russian government that Palchinsky had an active role in the movement, he was not brought to trial, but instead exiled under the emergency powers granted to the police during revolutionary turmoil.

While probably not a formal member, he associated himself with the moderate wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and supported the war effort against Germany.

Palchinsky resisted the Bolsheviks rule; however, gradually, certain aspects of the new Soviet political system appealed to him and many of his associates.

Palchinsky believed that the obstacles to the Russia's industrial advancement were not technological, but political, social, and educational.

During this time, policies started by the Bolsheviks and Stalin emphasized huge projects controlled by Moscow.

This did not set well with Palchinsky as he had seen firsthand the death and destruction caused when consideration of local conditions and safety measures were not taken.

[3] Palchinsky was vilified by Soviet propaganda, and then mostly forgotten, but he is given a much more favourable hearing in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago (1974), pt.1 and November 1916 (1984) which present him as a clear-eyed, hard-working spokesman of the engineer community.