Martyn Nikolaevich Liadov, (Russian: Мартын Николаевичч Лядов) pseudonym of Martyn Nikolaevich Mandel’shtam (24 August 1872 – 6 January 1947), was a Bolshevik revolutionary activist and historian. Biography Liadov was born in Moscow on 12 August Old Style 1872, the son of a prominent obstetrician and gynecologist, Nikolai Martynovich (Nokhim Mendelevich) Mandelstam. He was expelled from school at around the age of 12, and was sent by his parents to live with his wealthy uncle in Mitau (Jelgava), in modern-day Latvia, where he enrolled at a German language school. His parents both died while he was at school. In 1889, he was barred from graduating after taking part in protests against the forced russification of German schools. He joined the Russian army as a volunteer, and in 1891 he was transferred to the reserves as a junior officer, and returned to Moscow. Liadov was first drawn to the populist Narodnik movement in Moscow in 1891, but by 1893, he had been converted to Marxism by his brother, Grigori Mandelstam, who had returned to Moscow from Paris, and was involved in founding the Moscow Workers’ Union, the first Marxist organisation to have a following among factory workers in Moscow. He was arrested in 1892, and spent a short time in prison. In May 1895, he organised a meeting of the Central Workers' Union that drew a crowd of several hundred - the first of its kind held in Moscow. The meeting resulted in mass arrests, including Liadov's. He was held in prison for two years, then exiled to Verkhoiansk in 1897, for five years, after which he was sentenced to spend another two years under police supervision in Saratov, where he joined the Saratov Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In 1903, Liadov emigrated in 1903 to Geneva, and attended the Second Congress of the RSDLP, where he supported Vladimir Lenin in the disputes that led to the RSDLP splitting between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. He stayed loyal to Lenin when others were seeking to reunite the two factions, and took part in 1904 in the meeting of 22 Bolsheviks in Geneva, which created the 'Bureau of the Committees of the Majority', the forerunner of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, of which he was a member. He then attended the International Socialist Congress, Amsterdam 1904 as a Bolshevik delegate. During the 1905 Revolution, Liadov led the Baku Bolsheviks,