The last testament of the left communist Gavriil Miasnikov

Among the activists agitating within the Bolshevik Party for proletarian democracy in the early Soviet Union was the left communist Gavriil Miasnikov (1889-1945). When Miasnikov was expelled from the Party in 1922, he refused to capitulate like other oppositionists. Instead he set about organizing the Workers’ Group, an illegal organization which aimed initially at reforming the Bolshevik Party, a project which Miasnikov eventually decided was hopeless. While serving a term of exile, Miasnikov escaped abroad and lived in France for almost 15 years.

Miasnikov’s life was rescued from obscurity by Paul Avrich in a 1982 article which remains the standard biography in English. But Avrich did not have access to the sources necessary to establish the final phase of Miasnikov’s life, and had to rely on rumour and conjecture. Miasnikov made an impulsive decision to return to the USSR towards the end of World War II, and his friends in France only gradually became aware of his disappearance. Relying on a note in Lenin’s collected works, Avrich stated that Miasnikov died in 1946, but in fact he was executed on November 16 1945. […]

(From the introduction)