Tag #125016 - Interview #78040 (Vladimir Tarskiy)

My mother’s brother Victor was born in 1882. He finished a Realschule [7] in Odessa and began to work as a propagandist of the committee of social democrats. He was arrested and put in Odessa prison. He took part in a hunger strike, was taken to jail in Voronezh and exiled to eastern Siberia. He participated in a riot in a transit prison and was sentenced to 20 years of forced labor in a camp. In January 1905 Victor escaped through a mine to Paris where he became a professional revolutionary. His life was like an adventure story. Several times he traveled to Russia illegally, was arrested but escaped again. He lived in London, Argentina, Australia and Africa. After [the Russian Revolution of] 1917 [8] he returned to Russia through Japan. On his way back to Russia he managed to force Chinese officials to sign a protocol of reassignment of the Chinese Eastern Railroad to Russia. [Editor’s note: the railroad in North Eastern China, from Manchuria station through Kharbin to the Far East and Port Arthur, built by Russia in 1987-1903. Under the Russian-Chinese Treaty of 1924 it was recognized as a commercial enterprise to be managed jointly by China and Russia].