International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Shalom Schwarzbard (a.k.a. Sholom, Samuel, Shvartsbard, Schwartzbard), born in Bessarabia (then part of the Russian empire) in 1886, a poet, writer, socialist, anarchist, and Jewish activist, is remembered most for the assassination of Symon Petliura. He became active in the early 1900s in the radical socialist movement in Russia and was a member of the Jewish self-defense units during the pogroms of 1905–7. Forced to leave Russia, he arrived in Paris, where he worked as a watchmaker. Serving in the French Foreign Legion during World War I, he was seriously injured and awarded the Croix de Guerre. In 1917, he returned to Russia and fought for the Makhnovists in the Ukrainian civil war of 1918–20 (possibly after deserting the Red Army). Fourteen members of his family were killed during a new wave of pogroms in 1919. Returning to Paris and his occupation as watchmaker, he was later awarded French citizenship. It was there, in May 1926, in broad daylight, that he killed Petliura, former minister of war and president of the directorate of the Ukraine, now living in exile. Schwarzbard, accused of having acted as a Soviet agent, took sole responsibility for what he considered an act of justice. In his defense, the lawyer Henri Torrès concentrated on Petliura's responsibility for the Ukrainian pogroms, in which about 60,000 Jews were killed. Schwarzbard was acquitted on the grounds that ... log in or subscribe to read full text