Peter Petroff (; 1884 – 12 June 1947) was a Russian activist, journalist, active in the United Kingdom, and Germany. Early life and the 1905 Revolution Born to a Jewish family in Ostropol, Ukraine, Petroff became a carpenter. With a yearning to learn and 'an urge for the distant', Petroff moved to Odessa in 1898 where he informally attended university classes and organised his first workers' study circle and in 1901 joined the (illegal) Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), spending several stints in prison for his activities. He was a party organiser by the time of the 1905 Russian Revolution, during which he was very active, organising a socialist group within the Russian Army, and leading an uprising in Voronezh. He was seriously injured, captured and exiled to Siberia, but escaped and made his way to Geneva, then on to the UK in April 1907 for the congress of the RSDLP in London. Coming to prominence in Britain Once in London, Petroff initially encountered the cultural life of Jewish emigres, an inter-party centre of Russian emigres and was introduced to the Communist Club which functioned as the central rendez-vous of the capital's foreign socialists. Morgan (2013) corrects the historical record: "Petroff had not therefore Made his way to London through Leith and Glasgow, as has previously been understood. Nor was it Maclean who taught him English, which he 'seriously took to learning' in the East End and describes speaking fluently before ever setting foot in Glasgow." Petroff's autobiography describes his first visit to Scotland to carry out political work among four hundred Russian sailors stationed with a new Russian flagship sometime around 1907. It was there, in Glasgow-Clydebank, he wrote that he linked up with organised Social Democratic Party and several significant figures, although his political connections with Maclean at this time now appear from Petroff's own account appear to have been considerably overstated. After a further interlude in Paris, Petroff settled once more in London making his living through journalism and translations. For 1910-1915 Petroff was a delegate at all but one of the SDP's national conferences, the exception being the unity conference of 1911 giving rise to the British Socialist Pary (BSP). However, he became a leading opponent of the party's leadership, which he felt was ineffective, undemocratic, and nationalistic. The SDF reformed as the British Socialist Party (BSP) in 1912, and Petroff was elected to its