Leonid Nikolaevich Stark (Russian: Леонид Николаевич Старк; pseudonyms: Afghani, L. Manucharov, P. Ryabovsky,1889 – November, 1937) was a Russian

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

revolutionary,

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

diplomat and

editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...

Biography

Leonid Stark was born in to the family of Nikolay Nikolaevich Stark, an officer in the

Imperial Russian Army The Imperial Russian Army (russian: Ру́сская импера́торская а́рмия, tr. ) was the armed land force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian Ar ...

. Involved in the revolutionary movement from a young age, he joined the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; in , ''Rossiyskaya sotsial-demokraticheskaya rabochaya partiya (RSDRP)''), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party, was a socialist pol ...

in 1905 while being a student at the

Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology (Technical University) (russian: Санкт-Петербургский Технологический Институт (Технический Университет)) was founded in 1828. It is o ...

. Stark was arrested multiple times by the Tsarist authorities and was exiled. Initially settling in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, he then traveled to

Capri Capri ( , ; ; ) is an island located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrento Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. The main town of Capri that is located on the island shares the name. It has been ...

where he lived with

Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...

who published his poetry. In 1914 he returned to Russia and worked in the Petrograd Committee of the RSDLP (b). After the

February Revolution The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and somet ...

, he edited the

newspaper ''Volna'' in Helsingfors, which was distributed among the sailors of the

Baltic Fleet , image = Great emblem of the Baltic fleet.svg , image_size = 150 , caption = Baltic Fleet Great ensign , dates = 18 May 1703 – present , country = , allegiance = (1703–1721) (1721–1917) (1917–1922) (1922–1991)(1991–present) ...

and enjoyed great popularity among sailors. He showed journalistic and organizational skills, which then gave rise to the appointment of him as a commissioner of a news agency. On the day of the

October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...

, a group of sailors commissioned by the

Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee The Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee (russian: Петроградский военно-революционный комитет) was a militant group of the Petrograd Soviet and one of several military revolutionary committees that ...

, under the command of Stark stormed in to the building of the Petrograd Telegraph Agency and occupied it. He was later appointed deputy People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs of the RSFSR. In March 1918 Stark and other leaders of the Petrograd Telegraph Agency moved to Moscow and the PTA was merged with the Press Bureau of the All-Russian Central Executive, creating the

Russian Telegraph Agency Russian Telegraph Agency (russian: Российское телеграфное агентство, ''Rossiyskoye telegrafnoye agentstvo''), abbr. ROSTA, was the state news agency in Soviet Russia (1918-35). After the creation of Telegraph Agency ...

(ROSTA) which Stark became the director of. In 1919 during the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

he was a

military commissar Commissar (or sometimes ''Kommissar'') is an English transliteration of the Russian (''komissar''), which means 'commissary'. In English, the transliteration ''commissar'' often refers specifically to the political commissars of Soviet and Eas ...

in the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...

. From May 1920 he was authorized by the

People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs The Ministry of External Relations (MER) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (russian: Министерство иностранных дел СССР) was founded on 6 July 1923. It had three names during its existence: People's Co ...

for diplomatic work. From 1921 to 1923 he was Counselor of the RSFSR/USSR Embassy in Estonia and in 1923–1924 he was Plenipotentiary Representative in Estonia. From 1924 to 1936 he served as the plenipotentiary of the USSR in Afghanistan. On August 31, 1926, he signed the Soviet-Afghan treaty on neutrality and mutual non-aggression. In 1937, while working as an authorized person of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR under the Council of People's Commissars of the

Transcaucasian SFSR , conventional_long_name = Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic , common_name = Transcaucasian SFSR , p1 = Armenian Soviet Socialist RepublicArmenian SSR , flag_p1 = Flag of SSRA ...

, he was arrested in Tbilisi on charges of being involved in counter-revolutionary activities. Some Soviet sources claim that Stark died of pneumonia in 1942 while he was in prison captivity, however it is most likely he was shot in November 1937. Leonid Stark was posthumously rehabilitated after the

Khrushchev Thaw The Khrushchev Thaw ( rus, хрущёвская о́ттепель, r=khrushchovskaya ottepel, p=xrʊˈɕːɵfskəjə ˈotʲ:ɪpʲɪlʲ or simply ''ottepel'')William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004 is the period ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stark, Leonid 1889 births 1937 deaths Soviet newspaper editors Ambassadors of the Soviet Union to Estonia Ambassadors of the Soviet Union to Afghanistan Soviet rehabilitations Great Purge victims from Russia Russian revolutionaries Old Bolsheviks Russian Social Democratic Labour Party members People from the Russian Empire People of the Russian Revolution Soviet editors Soviet diplomats