Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich (Russian: Владимир Дмитриевич Бонч-Бруевич; sometimes spelled Bonch-Bruevich; in Polish Boncz-Brujewicz; 28 June [O.S.

[1] Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich, born in Moscow into the family of a land surveyor who came from the Mogilev province, belonged to the nobility of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

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.

[5] In the late 1890s, he collaborated with Vladimir Chertkov and Leo Tolstoy,[6] in particular in arrangement of the Doukhobors' emigration to Canada in 1899.

He published them later (1909) as "The Doukhobor Book of Life" (Russian: «Животная книга духоборцев», Zhivotnaya Kniga Dukhobortsev).

Bonch-Bruyevich returned to Russia early in 1905, and for a time worked illegally for the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg, organising an underground storage of weapons.

In 1906, he organised the Bolsheviks' weekly newspaper Наша мысль (Nasha mysl - Our Beliefs or Our Idea), the journal Вестник жизни (Vestnik zhizni – Herald of Life), and several other publications.

From 1907, he headed the Bolshevik publishing house, Жизнь и знание (Zhizn i znanie – Life and Knowledge).

On the outbreak of the February Revolution, in 1917, Bonch-Bruyevich founded the newspaper Izvestya, and used it in April as a vehicle to defend Lenin's decision to return to Russia through Germany, despite the two countries being at war.

During June and July 1917, Bolshevik party meetings were held at his dacha, to avoid attention of the police.

Bonch-Bruyevich took an active part in nationalization of the banks in preparation of the Soviet government moving to Moscow in March 1918.