Background
Wladimir Savelyevich Woytinsky was born on November 12, 1885, in Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation into a literati family.
Wladimir Savelyevich Woytinsky was born on November 12, 1885, in Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation into a literati family.
Wladimir Savelyevich graduated from the 5th Sant Petersburg gymnasium (with a gold medal). Being a gymnasium student, he became interested in issues of political economy, published the work On the Methodology of Political Economy (1905) and Market and Prices: the theory of market consumption and market prices (1906), in which he sought to combine historical and psychological methods.
In 1904 Wladimir Savelyevich entered the Law Faculty of Saint Petersburg University (did not graduate, was dismissed in August 1909 for non-payment of tuition fees), in November of the same year he was first arrested for revolutionary agitation.
Wladimir Savelyevich was a member of the RSDLP, Bolsheviks. He was the organizer and chairman of the Council of the unemployed, after the defeat of which (1907) he was arrested, illegally arrived in Yekaterinoslav, where he became a member of the local committee of the RSDLP.
In 1908 Wladimir Savelyevich was arrested, exiled to hard labor in Siberia, from January 1913 - at a settlement in Irkutsk. In exile, he worked in the Irkutsk Committee of Social Democrats, was a member of many public organizations, and collaborated in the New Siberia newspaper. In a letter to Wladimir Savelyevich (1913) V.I. Lenin criticized him for his Menshevik bias, calling for fidelity to his former views. During World War I, Wladimir Savelyevich, together with I.G. Tsereteli and N.A. Rozhkov published the anti-war Siberian Journal (1914).
Since 191O, the author begins to publish fictionalized essays and stories based on personal impressions of his experiences in prisons, penal servitude, and exile during the period of repression after the defeat of the first Russian Revolution of 1905-1907. In the book Beyond Life. Essays on Prison and Hard Labor (1914) he paints a colorful and vivid picture of human destinies and characters, shows people of different political views and social status. Considering the problem of crime and punishment in a broad aspect, both from a legal and social, psychological and moral points of view, Wladimir Savelyevich is a strong opponent of the death penalty, calling it an unsuitable means of "social pedagogy", leading to increased crime and "deep moral feral".
Woitinsky's works attracted the attention of M. Gorky: "... I really like your stories" (letter to Wladimir Savelyevich from 1914). In Gorky's editorship of the journal Enlightenment, an excerpt from the work of Woitinsky's Wave, published under the title Ray of Light in the Middle of the Night (1914), was published. Wladimir Savelyevich also published his fiction works in the magazine Our Dawn, Sovremennik, and he also wrote articles on economic and political topics, including Unemployment and Lockouts (1914).
During the World War I years, Wladimir Savelyevich became close to the leading Georgian Menshevik Irakli Tsereteli and defected to the more moderate Mensheviks. During the Russian Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, edited the newspaper Izvestia, and served as a commissar at front. After the October Revolution, he was briefly arrested and subsequently fled to the newly established Democratic Republic of Georgia.
Wladimir Savelyevich then lived in Germany, working as a researcher for the German Federation of Trade Unions and International Labour Organization. In 1935, he left for the United States, where he worked for the Central Statistical Board and Social Security Board. He belonged to the Mensheviks in emigration, but gradually distanced himself from Russian emigration as a whole.
During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Wladimir Savelyevich joined the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He was arrested by the police and exiled to Siberia. During the World War I years, he became close to the leading Georgian Menshevik Irakli Tsereteli and defected to the more moderate Mensheviks.
During the Russian Revolution of 1917, Wladimir Savelyevich was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, edited the newspaper Izvestia, and served as a commissar at front.
Quotes from others about the person
According to the memoirs of General P.N. Krasnova, Wladimir Savelyevich Woytinsky was: "... an ideological man who defended the army from destruction."