In the documents of correspondence between the Police Department and the Courland Gendarme Department for 1905, stored in the Central State Administration of the USSR, there is a list of persons placed under the public supervision of the police .1 As of January 1, 1905, Karl Lander was also listed as one of the followers of Leo Tolstoy's teachings. In the last volumes of the Soviet academic edition of Tolstoy's works, his letters to the young Latvian K. I. Lander were first published. His letters to Tolstoy are kept in the latter's archive. Correspondence between them was conducted from the beginning of 1901 until the spring of 1905. In the multi-volume History of the CPSU, Karl Lander is mentioned as a prominent Bolshevik who played a significant role in the revolutionary movement2 .
Karl Ivanovich was born in 1884 in Courland, in a poor peasant family and even as a child learned hard work. Completely ruined, his parents moved to Libava (Liepaja), where his father became a laborer. Karl, after graduating from the sixth-grade city school, worked as an apprentice in a carpenter's workshop, a laborer in a factory, and a longshoreman in a port. At the age of sixteen, he passed an external examination for the title of national teacher and took the place of a junior teacher in a rural school. Even then, he showed a great interest in revolutionary literature, was associated with the Social Democrats, contributed to their propaganda among the workers, and considered himself a socialist. It was then that the young man met the famous Tolstoy Ivan Mikhailovich Tregubov, who was exiled to Libava under police supervision, and fell under his influence .3
Lander became a fanatical follower of Tolstoy's ideas. He "said goodbye", did not cut his hair and did not shave, became a vegetarian. His main mottos of those years were: "I don't eat anyone" and " Don't resist evil with violence." The young teacher accordingly instructed the students-rural children. He gave them to read the works of Leo Tolstoy-
1 TsGAOR USSR, f. 102, 1905, 35, ll. 2 ob., 28.
2 "History of the CPSU", vol. III. kn. I. M. 1967, p. 278.
3 See TsGAOR USSR, f. 102, 1905, d. 12, part 1, ll. 38 vol. - 40.
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stogo, banned by the police, translated some of his journalistic articles into Latvian, reproduced them on a hectograph and distributed them to the local population. Soon, in December 1900, he was dismissed from school as unreliable. Finding himself in a very difficult financial situation, Lander decided to seek advice from a writer. Here is what he wrote on February 2, 1901: "During my teaching career, fate almost accidentally brought me together with Ivan Mikhailovich. I was an ardent socialist at that time, and I even intended to start propagandizing socialism in the countryside. And here, thanks to Ivan Mikhailovich, I got acquainted with many of your foreign works, mostly from the"Leaflets of Free Speech". It was like a new light dawned on me when I read your writings... On Sundays, I went to visit some peasant I knew. Sometimes about 20 of us gathered here... we read and reread your works, which I translated into Latvian ("Demands of Love", "Letter to the Sergeant Major", "Thou Shalt Not Kill", etc.). But I was soon fired... I myself am now left without any occupation that provides material means of living. I was going to work in a factory, as a farmhand, as a laborer; I went to get a job, but they don't accept me. There are a lot of unemployed people without me... I ask for your advice, what should I do?"4 .
Leo Tolstoy was not slow in responding to the young Latvian's letter. On February 21, 1901, he wrote to him: "Dear Karl Ivanovich, About your personal life... I would be very happy if I could help you. Write to me and tell me the names of people in Libava who might be responsible for getting you a place... Write down exactly what I could do. I very much wish you a firm adherence to the beliefs that you have come to... I would like to send you some of my latest writings. But don't know if it's safe for you to deliver them to you. Your brother Leo Tolstoy"5 .
On February 27, 1901, Lander replied to Tolstoy, and again wrote to him on April 11 of the same year: "... I was drawn to the country in the spring, because I am a peasant in body and soul. I think I would just leave this city, this filth, this stuffiness, this debauchery, and go to the country, and get a job as a farmhand. But there are thousands more in this city who are just as unhappy as I am, and even more unhappy... In our country, a movement among the workers begins in the spring. The socialists are actively agitating and want to organize a holiday by the First of May. I've been to their meetings several times. Their aspirations, it seems to me, come down to good goals." Lander was already working as a proofreader in the printing house of the newspaper Libavskiye Novosti. Due to an oversight of the local censorship, it was possible to print some of Leo Tolstoy's articles. On April 13, 1901, Lander informed Leo Tolstoy that the police and clergy had attacked Libavskiye Novosti for publishing these articles. The letter was accompanied by an excerpt from the Riga newspaper "Baltic Region", which made violent attacks on the writer and on the Libava newspapermen who popularized his "harmful appeals".
In the early summer of 1902, Karl Lander went from Courland to the Crimea to get to Gaspra, where Lev Nikolaevich was then. He had no money to travel by rail, so he went on foot, through Belarus and Ukraine, striving, like a fanatic, to his "Mecca". But during a police raid on vagabonds in Melitopol, Lander was arrested and sent to Libava. During the arrest, he resisted and thus aggravated his situation. For several months he trudged along the stage, until finally he got to his native places. In Libava, he was held for several more months under arrest, then his father took him on bail. Upon his release from prison, Lander was placed under public police supervision. In connection with the accusation of resisting the police, Leo Tolstoy wrote to him on October 11, 1902 about his desire to help him. Assistance was provided 6 .
Lander continued to correspond with Tolstoy7 . So, on May 1, 1904, he informs a writer from the Libava prison that he was arrested on March 1 for transporting illegal literature and that he faces exile. And on May 7, 1904, the writer informs his friend P. A. Boulanger: "I am very happy to help Lander, and if my guarantee goes to-
4 Manuscript collection of the Leo Tolstoy Museum in Moscow. Correspondence. Collection of B. L., cor. 161/49, letters of K. Lander.
5 L. N. Tolstoy. Complete Works, vol. 73, Moscow, 1954, p. 41.
6 Manuscript Collection of the Leo Tolstoy Museum in Moscow. Copy book, No. 4, l. 264.
7 See L. N. Tolstoy. Complete Works, vol. 73, p. 308; vol. 74, p. 70, 222. Manuscript Collection of the Leo Tolstoy Museum. Correspondence. Collection of B. L., box 161/49.
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if it is necessary, then let them write to me how to formulate it, and I will write... " 8 . Here is the guarantee: "July 12, 1904. Yasnaya Polyana. To the assistant chief of the Courland Gendarme Department. Count Leo Tolstoy's Petition. Having learned that the arrested Karl Ivanovich Lander can be released if he presents a surety for himself that he will not hide from the investigation and the court, but will appear at the request of the authorities subject to him, and that the amount of this guarantee is set at 2000 rubles, I have the honor to declare that I guarantee Karl Ivanovich Lander in all this And I ask you to accept this statement of mine as a required act of surety, and to release him, Lander. Leo Tolstoy " 9 . Two months later, Lander was released from prison, where he spent six months in solitary confinement. On September 15, 1904, Lander informs Tolstoy that he has been released from prison on bail, and thanks the writer for getting rid of the walls of lone man. 10 As a politically unreliable and supervised person, Lander could not work at the school. His health was compromised, and in the future he was expected to be sent to exile or prison again. In his autobiography, compiled in July 1931, Lander wrote about this period of his life:: "I spent several months in prison... In prison, I met well-known Latvian social Democrats at that time, and this acquaintance determined my further development. When I got out of prison, I became close to the social-democratic circle that was then forming in Libava and took a very close part in the revolutionary work (I wrote leaflets, was a propagandist, worked on "technique", printed proclamations on the hectograph, distributed them, etc.) " 11 .
In this autobiography, Lander mentioned, among other things, that he took "the closest part in the January political strike protesting against the shooting of workers on January 9, 1905 in St. Petersburg on Palace Square." In No. 6(78) of the Bolshevik newspaper Vperyod of February 1(14), 1905, V. D. Bonch-Bruevich described this "Strike on January 13 in Libava" as follows: "A huge crowd of demonstrators, which reached 30,000 people, marched with red banners, singing revolutionary songs. In one place, the hated gendarme non-commissioned officer Rushevich, the right-hand man of the head of the gendarme department Mezentsev, rushed at the standard-bearer. This non-commissioned officer was immediately killed, and the policemen were driven away. The workers were extremely revolutionary, and the troops did not dare to pursue the demonstrators..." Lander was shocked by the events in Riga on January 12 , where on January 13 the police and troops committed a massacre of workers.
On April 5, 1905, a Latvian social Democrat, a member of the militant group Jan Lutter, made an armed attack on a police convoy and released one arrested social Democrat, a teacher, after which he hid in the apartment of Lander 13 . It wasn't an accident. By that time, Lander's worldview had completely changed. He moves to Moscow, where, on Tolstoy's recommendation, he gets a job. There, having joined the ranks of the RSDLP, he becomes a Bolshevik. In his autobiography, Lander wrote that he began "working in an urban area in Moscow as a propagandist and agitator... Together with P. G. Dauge, he organized the Moscow Latvian Group of Bolsheviks, mostly students... He organized a combat team with the group... " 14 . During the December 1905 armed uprising, Lander, like other Latvian vigilantes, fought on the barricades in Gruziny and Malaya Bronnaya, where their "flying headquarters"was located in the house under No. 18. After the defeat of the uprising, Lander became a member of the Rogozhsky district committee of the party, a propagandist of the Dangauer subdistrict, where he worked under the party nickname "Mikhail". There he organized a number of workers ' strikes. When mass arrests began, Lander moved to St. Petersburg. Here he collaborates in the publications "Baltic Voice" and "Bulletin of Knowledge", conducts party work.
In St. Petersburg, Lander again participated in the organization of the Latvian Bolshevik initiative group, which set itself the goal of resuming illegal party activities and strengthening the fight against corruption.
8 L. N. Tolstoy. Complete Works, vol. 75, p. 48.
9 Handwritten collection of the Leo Tolstoy Museum. Correspondence. Letters of Leo Tolstoy, inv. N 2259.
10 Ibid. Collection of B. L., box 161/49.
11 CPA IML, f. 124, op. 2, d. 345, l. 2.
12 "Completed path". Collection, Riga, 1965 (in Latin).
13 See "J. Luther-Bobis". Collection of memoirs. Riga. 1962, p. 192.
14 CPA IML, f. 124, op. 2, d. 345, ll 2-3.
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god-seeking and other theories that degrade working-class affairs. In 1907-1908, he conducted party work in the Vasileostrovsky district and on the St. Petersburg side, and led a party circle at the Baltic Factory. Lander then moved to Libava, where he was elected a member of the Libava party Committee. In the days of the defeat of the Okhrana Libava underground organization SDLK, in 1910, he fled to Moscow, and then to Samara. Here he participated in the restoration of the Bolshevik organization after its defeat, established underground activities, was elected a member of the Samara Committee of the RSDLP(b) and remained in this work until 1914. With the transfer of the newspaper Zarya Povolzhya to the Bolsheviks, Lander became its main employee and editor. At the beginning of the First World War, he managed to issue a number of anti-war proclamations, and the last issue of Zarya Povolzhya was published with a protest against this imperialist war. Then he moves to Nizhny Novgorod, where he conducts party work in the city and Kanavinsky (factory) organizations. To avoid arrest, he again goes to Moscow, and then to Minsk, where he participates in the establishment of party work in the army and in the front-line zone 15 .
This was his life as a Bolshevik underground worker. Little remains of the former Tolstoyist. A staunch revolutionary, a staunch Leninist, Karl Lander was arrested eight times since 1901. Made several escapes. He was last arrested in 1915 in Nizhny Novgorod. He had experienced all the hardships of a professional revolutionary, and was constantly subjected to persecution, persecution, and danger. But, as seasoned revolutionaries used to joke in those days, it was better to be arrested eight times and serve one year in prison than to be arrested once and serve eight years in prison. Lander was definitely "lucky" in that regard.
In the difficult conditions of life and underground activities, Lander managed to acquire such knowledge of history through great efforts and self-education that in 1908-1909 he published his work "History of Latvia"in St. Petersburg. Even earlier, he began to converge closely with M. N. Pokrovsky and I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov. The February revolution found him working in the "Union of Zemstvos and Towns" in the front-line district, where he conducted anti-war agitation in the troops. In March 1917, he was elected a member of the Minsk city and then regional Bolshevik committee. He also worked for the Bolshevik newspaper Zvezda .16 That's when Lander's extraordinary abilities as an organizer, propagandist and publicist fully manifested themselves. There he became close to M. V. Frunze, A. F. Myasnikov, V. G. Knorin and other prominent Bolsheviks of the Western Front.
After the October Revolution, Lander was elected chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the North-Western . When Minsk was occupied by German troops, he was recalled to Petrograd, where, as a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, he worked under the leadership of Y. M. Sverdlov, and in May 1918 was appointed People's Commissar of State Control of the RSFSR. At that time, he worked under the direct supervision of V. I. Lenin, visited him almost daily, and received his direct directives, advice ,and instructions. 18 After the reorganization of the State Control and the appointment of I. V. Stalin as People's Commissar of the RKI, Lander remained his first deputy .19 In 1920, the former Tolstoyan was appointed special representative of the Cheka for the North Caucasus and the Don region20 . The archive contains an official letter from F. E. Dzerzhinsky to the chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal of the RSFSR, K. Yu. K. Danishevsky, in which Dzerzhinsky speaks highly of Lander. Lander was then the head of the Special Department of the Caucasian Front.
Starting with the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lander was elected a delegate to the Congresses of Soviets and a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of five convocations. He remained a tireless worker in any position entrusted to him by the party. In 1921, he became head of the propaganda department of the Moscow Party Committee. A special place in his post-revolutionary activities was occupied by the fight against hunger. Lander was an authorized representative of the Soviet government to foreign organizations of famine relief in Russia.
15 Ibid., ll. 2-3 vol.
16 "October days and their preparation in the Western region". Minsk. 1918, pp. 43-45.
17 " The Great October Socialist Revolution in Belarus. (Documents and materials)". Minsk. 1957, pp. 214-216, 294-296.
18 See V. I. Lenin, PSS. vol. 50, pp. 246-247.
19 CPA IML, f. 124, op. 2, d. 345, l. 3 vol.
20 Ibid.
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With his energetic, hard work, he greatly contributed to the success of the cause, and represented in these organizations as a true diplomat of the Soviet formation, performing his functions with great dignity. In 1923, Lander was appointed to the post of a member of the Board of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade; he was then engaged in the problems of export and import. It was from this post that Lander was forced to retire due to illness, and since the second half of the 20s, he has devoted himself entirely to literary and research activities in the field of history and journalism. However, his most significant work is probably the three-volume History of Latvia, published in Latvian at the time, reprinted in Moscow in 1922 and still has not lost a certain scientific value.
Karl Ivanovich Lander died on July 29, 1937. He left literary and historical works and a large handwritten legacy, and in an obituary published on August 5, 1937 in the Latvian newspaper Kommunisticheskaya Tsina, then published in Moscow, his fruitful revolutionary activity was highly appreciated: his courage in the struggle, indefatigability in work, Bolshevik firmness and integrity were noted. Here is a brief summary of the life of one of those whose name is now mentioned in the multi-volume "History of the CPSU".
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