V. Volodarsky (; December 11, 1891 – June 20, 1918) (born: Moisey Markovich Goldstein) was a Marxist revolutionary and Soviet politician. He was assassinated in 1918. Biography Early years V. Volodarsky was born to the family of a Jewish craftsman in Ostropol, in the Volhynian Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine). Revolutionary politics In 1905, he became involved in revolutionary activity within the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, but soon joined Spilka, the Ukrainian Social Democratic organisation which aligned itself with the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. He was briefly imprisoned in 1908 and then was politically active in Volhynia. Then in 1911 he was exiled by the government to Arkhangelsk, but was included in the general amnesty of 1913. Continued persecution led him to emigrate to the United States, settling in Philadelphia. Here he became active in the International Trade Union of Tailors and the Socialist Party. During World War I, Volodarsky sided with the internationalist Mensheviks and moved to the left. In 1916-1917, he was a contributor to the New York-based newspaper of the Russian Socialist Federation, Novy Mir (New World), edited by Nikolai Bukharin. Return to Russia In May 1917, Volodarsky returned to Russia, joined the Mezhraiontsy group and was elected to the Petrograd City Duma. Along with the rest of the mezhraiontsy, he joined the Bolsheviks at the 6th Party Congress in July–August 1917 and soon became one of their best known public speakers and agitators. He focused his activity in the Petergof area, including the Putilov factory. In mid-October 1917, while the Bolsheviks were debating whether to try to overthrow the Russian Provisional Government, Volodarsky sided with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, who were against the insurrection. At the Second Congress of Soviets during the October Revolution of 1917, Volodarsky was elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK). He was appointed editor of the Red Gazette in Petrograd and chief of the Press Division of the Executive Committee of the Union of Northern Communes. This gave him broad censorship powers. His colleague Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote: And he was ruthless. He was imbued not only with the full menace of the October Revolution, but with a foretaste of the outbursts of Red terror which were to come after his death. There is no sense in concealing the fact that Volodarsky was a terrorist. He was profoundly