Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich (; sometimes spelled Bonch-Bruevich; in Polish Boncz-Brujewicz; – 14 July 1955) was a Soviet politician, revolutionary, historian, writer and Old Bolshevik. He was Vladimir Lenin's personal secretary.
Early life
Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich, born in Moscow into the family of a land surveyor who came from the Mogilev province, belonged to the nobility of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He was a younger brother of the future Soviet military commander Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich. At the age of ten, he was sent to the in Moscow; where he studied in the school of land surveying. In 1889, he was arrested for taking part in a student demonstration, expelled from the Institute and banished to Kursk. He returned to Moscow in 1892, entered the and distributed illegal literature. From 1895 he was active in social-democratic circles. In 1896 he emigrated to Switzerland and organized shipments of Russian revolutionary literature and printing equipment. He became an active member of the staff of Iskra.
Researching dissenters and supporting Doukhobors
One of Bonch-Bruyevich's research interests were Russia's dissenting religious minorities ("sects"), which were usually persecuted to various extent by both the established Orthodox Church and the Tsarist government. He believed that Baptists and Flagellants were "transmission points" for revolutionary propaganda. During the 1917 revolutions, he is reputed to have played a crucial in neutralising the Cossack garrison in the capital, Petrograd, through his contacts in the New Israel and Old Israel sects. He also met Grigori Rasputin, but judged that he was an Orthodox Christian, not sectarian.
In the late 1890s, he collaborated with Vladimir Chertkov and Leo Tolstoy, in particular in arrangement of the Doukhobors' emigration to Canada in 1899. Bonch-Bruyevich sailed with the Doukhobors, and spent a year with them in Canada. During that time, he was able to record much of their orally transmitted tradition, in particular the Doukhobor "psalms" (hymns). He published them later (1909) as "The Doukhobor Book of Life" (, Zhivotnaya Kniga Dukhobortsev).
Political activism
When the RSDLP split in 1903 between the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, and the Mensheviks, Bonch-Bruyevich was among the original Bolsheviks. He helped bring out the RSDLP newspaper Iskra while it was still under Lenin's control, and backed Lenin during 1904, when it appeared he might be losing control of the Bolsheviks to conciliators who wanted to heal the split. In December 1904, he helped organise Vpered, the first Bolshevik newspaper. According to Lenin's widow "Bonch-Bruyeich was in charge of the business side. He permanently beamed, concocted divers grandiose plans, and was always dashing around on printing-press matters." He also helped set up and run the party archive.
Bonch-Bruyevich returned to Russia early in 1905, and for a time worked illegally for the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg, organising an underground storage of weapons. After the 1905 revolution, he was able to operate legally. In 1906, he organised the Bolsheviks' weekly newspaper Наша мысль (Nasha mysl - Our Beliefs or Our Idea), the journal Вестник жизни (Vestnik zhizni – Herald of Life), and several other publications. From 1907, he headed the Bolshevik publishing house, Жизнь и знание (Zhizn i znanie – Life and Knowledge). From 1912 he was a member of the editorial board of the newspaper Pravda. During this time he was repeatedly arrested, but did not serve a long prison sentence.
On the outbreak of the February Revolution, in 1917, Bonch-Bruyevich founded the newspaper Izvestya, and used it in April as a vehicle to defend Lenin's decision to return to Russia through Germany, despite the two countries being at war. He was dismissed from the staff by the Menshevik-controlled Petrograd Soviet in May for using it to disseminate Bolshevik propaganda. During June and July 1917, Bolshevik party meetings were held at his dacha, to avoid attention of the police. In August, the head of the provisional government, Alexander Kerensky, ordered his arrest, and he went into hiding. During the October Revolution, he was in charge of protecting the Bolshevik party headquarters in the Smolny Institute, in Petrograd.