Leonid Kannegisser

Leonid Kannegisser (Russian: Леони́д Иоаки́мович (Аки́мович) Кáннегисер, Leonid Ioakimovich (Akimovich) Kannegiser; March 1896 – October 1918) was a Russian-Jewish poet and military cadet, known for assassinating Moisei Uritsky, chief of the Cheka in Petrograd, on 17 August 1918.[1]

Leonid Kannegisser
BornMarch 1896
Nikolaev, Russian Empire
Died1918
Petrograd, Russian SFSR
AllegianceImperial Russian Army
Service/branchArtillery
Years of service1913-1918
RankJunker

Life and career

Leonid Kannegisser (also spelled Kanngießer or Kannegiesser)[2] was born in March 1896 in Nikolaev, Ukraine, (then part of the Russian Empire), into a wealthy Jewish family. His father, Akim (Joachim) Kannegisser, was a mechanical engineer and the head of Russia's largest shipyards, the Black Sea Shipyard, and his mother was a doctor. Kannegisser graduated from a private school and in 1913 became a military cadet in the Mikhailov Artillery School of the Imperial Russian Army. Kannegisser studied economics from 1915 to 1917 at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute and was a member of Popular Socialists, a moderate left-wing anti-Communist political party. An admirer of Alexander Kerensky[2], on the night of 25 to 26 October 1917 (Old Style Julian Calendar), during the October Revolution, Kannegisser and several other cadets defended the Provisional Government at the Winter Palace. In 1917 he dedicated a poem to Alexander Kerensky.[2]

Uritsky's assassination

On 17 August 1918 around nine o’clock, Kannegisser, wearing a leather jacket and an officers cap, turned up at the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, left his bicycle by the door and entered the building. Uritsky arrived in his car at around ten o’clock, and a few moments later he was fatally shot in his head and body by Kannegisser. After shooting Uritsky, he ran out into the street and tried to escape on his bicycle, riding quickly but was chased by a car. He threw away his bicycle and ran into the British embassy. Kannegisser left the embassy after having donned a longcoat and opened fire on Red Guards but he was arrested.

Kannegisser was tortured. He declared that he had acted alone and was executed shortly afterwards in Petrograd.[3][4] Following his arrest, the Bolshevik authorities also arrested several members of his family and friends.[3] After being released, his parents emigrated to Warsaw, where they died.

Motivation

Kannegisser was part of a clandestine anti-Bolshevik group led by his cousin, Maximilian Filonenko, who had close links with Boris Savinkov, who gave the order to assassinate Uritsky. Viktor Pereltsveig, an army officer lover (Kannegisser was homosexual), was executed with a group of officers by the Cheka in the summer of 1918. Kannegisser decided to take revenge by killing Uritsky, who had signed the execution orders.[3]

Poetry

From childhood Kannegisser had written poetry and was a friend of Sergei Yesenin. He hosted in his house many literary meetings, where Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelshtam and others presented their poetry.[5] A decade after Kannegiesser’s execution his poems were posthumously published by Mark Aldanov in Paris in 1928. A major part of Kannegisser's literary heritage is preserved in the closed files of the Central Government Archives of Literature and Art in Moscow.[6]

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gollark: https://wiki.haskell.org/Web/Frameworks
gollark: Yesod is the big popular one.
gollark: > are there any good web frameworks for haskellServant, for APIs?
gollark: Great idea.

References
  1. Vitaliy Shentalinsky, "Crime without punishment", Progress-Pleyada, Moscow, 2007, ISBN 978-5-93006-033-1 (Russian: Виталий Шенталинский, "Преступление без наказания"), Chapter 2, Poet-terrorist. Link to text in Russian Journal
  2. Dralyuk, Boris (2017-10-18). "Dartmouth and Leonid Kannegiesser (1896-1918)". bdralyuk.wordpress.com. Archived from the original on 2019-09-05. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
  3. Malmstad, John E.; Bogomolov, Nikolay (2001). "No Time for Poets". thefreelibrary.com. Archived from the original on 2018-06-22. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
  4. Lina, Jüri. "Under the Sign of the Scorpion: the Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire". jyrilina.com. Archived from the original on 2019-09-22. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
  5. Shentalinsky, page 115.
  6. "Kannegiser, Leonid Akimovich". jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Archived from the original on 2018-11-05. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
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