Aleksandr Yulievich Ge (1879—1919) was a Russian anarchist politician. An activist from an early age, he became an anarcho-communist during the 1905 Revolution and fled to Switzerland for his revolutionary activities. In exile, he became a vocal proponent of the internationalist position during World War I, before returning to Russia with the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution. There he elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and challenged a number of Bolshevik policies, particularly the ratification of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the political repression of Russian anarchists. He then moved to the North Caucasus, where he was appointed as chairman of the local Cheka and participated in the region's defence against the White movement, for which he was eventually killed. Biography In 1879 Aleksandr Yulievich Golberg (later known by his pseudonym "Ge") was born Königsberg, then in the territory of the German Empire. At the age of two, Ge was brought by his family to Moscow, where he was raised. He went to school in the city's Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, from which he was expelled while in the 6th grade for spreading revolutionary propaganda. From 1902 he lived in Saint Petersburg and attended lectures at the local university. Early political activism During the 1905 Russian Revolution he became an anarcho-communist, was elected a member of the Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies and spoke in factories and plants. In December 1905, he was arrested and imprisoned in Kresty Prison. In the summer of 1906, Ge contracted tuberculosis and was granted medical release. He used the opportunity to flee to Switzerland and was subsequently sentenced in Russia to five years of hard labour in absentia. While on a stagecoach going through Davos, Ge met a fellow Russian exile , who later became his wife. In exile Ge collaborated with various anarchist press organs, and made a living writing articles and essays for newspapers and magazines in Kyiv. In January 1914, he became one of the organizers of the 1st United Conference of Russian Communist Anarchists in London. Around the same time he was elected to the editorial board of the anarchist newspaper Working World (). During World War I Ge led a group of communist anarchists in Switzerland with a strongly anti-war stance. He was openly critical of the Manifesto of the Sixteen, written by anarchists that supported the Allies, whom he denounced as "anarcho-patriots". For this stance, Ge