Vladimir Purishkevich
12 August] 1870 – 1 February 1920) was a Russian politician and right-wing extremist known for his monarchist, ultra-nationalist, antisemitic and anticommunist views.
Born as the son of a poor nobleman in Kishinev, Bessarabia (now Moldova), Purishkevich graduated from Novorossiysk University with a degree in classical philology.
He believed that the "Kadets, socialists, the intelligentsia, the press and councils of university professors" were all under the control of Jews.
[4] During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Purishkevich helped organise the Black Hundreds, a reactionary, monarchist and ultra-nationalist militia that carried out a number of raids (with unofficial government approval) against revolutionary groups as well as pogroms against Jews.
[7][2] In the Duma, he gained fame and infamy for his flamboyant speeches and scandalous behaviour, such as speaking on International Workers' Day with a red carnation in his fly.
[4] When the first Russian women's congress convened in 1908, Purishkevich sent a letter to several of the participants calling it "an assembly of whores".
[12] He stated that the monarchy was becoming discredited:[13][14] The Tsar's ministers who have been turned into marionettes, marionettes whose threads have been taken firmly in hand by Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna—the evil genius of Russia and the Tsarina... who has remained a German on the Russian throne and alien to the country and its people.
[21] Because Purishkevich's wife refused to burn the fur coat and the boots in her small fireplace in the ambulance train, the conspirators went back to the palace with the larger items.
[22] During the February Revolution in 1917, many right-wingers were arrested but Purishkevich was tolerated by the government and so was "virtually the only former national Black Hundred leader to maintain an active political life in Russia after the tsar's downfall".
On 18 November 1917, Purishkevich was arrested by the Red Guards for his participation in a counterrevolutionary conspiracy after the discovery of a letter sent by him to General Aleksei Maksimovich Kaledin in which he urged the Cossack leader to come and restore order in Petrograd.
There, during the Russian Civil War he published the monarchist journal Blagovest and returned openly to his traditional political stance of support for the monarchy, a unified Russia, and opposition to the Jews.
[26] Purishkevich was described by contemporary Russian politician Vladimir Kokovtsov as a charming, unstable man who could not stay a single minute in one place.
[29][30] He was subsequently referred to as a "leader of early Russian fascism" by Semyon Reznik,[31] who also claimed that Purishkevich participated in numerous pogroms and was a significant proponent of the blood libel against Jews.
