Isaak Khristoforovich Lalayants (pseudonyms: Columbus, Izarov, Insarov et al.; – 14 July 1933) was a Russian revolutionary, Bolshevik and comrade-in-arms of Vladimir Lenin.
He was a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) since 1898 and member of its Central Committee from 1905 to 1906.
Early youth
Isaak Lalayants was born in to an Armenian family in the town of Kizlyar, in Terek Oblast. After learning initial Armenian literacy, he is sent to Tbilisi, where he enters the first class of the Realschule. During the transition to second grade, he was transferred to the Kazan real school, where he graduated in 1889.
In Kazan, Lalayants got acquainted with the circle of the prominent Russian Marxist Nikolai Fedoseev, who made a very strong impression on him. Lalayants subsequently writes that Fedoseev possessed a strong and deep mind, that he was "a man with brilliant talents both in the field of theory and practice". In the years 1888–1889, Lalayants joined the Marxist circle of Fedoseev, under whose leadership he began to study Marxist literature.
He studied at the Kazan Imperial University, but was expelled in 1889 after being arrested for participating in the revolutionary movement. He was deported from Kazan with an interdiction for an indefinite period to return there.In his autobiographical questionnaire, Lalayants writes that he was first arrested at 19 years old, the second time at 22 years old, the third at 29 years old, the fourth at 34 years old, the fifth at 36 years old. Legguards fettered for 10 months, until 1917 he stayed for 11 years (GARF and SS, file 619/s, case 1651).
For around two years, he stayed in different cities of Russia, serving military service in the Caucasus. In Nizhny Novgorod he conducted social democratic propaganda in the workers' circles of Sormovo, the workshops of the Kurbatov shipping company and others.
In the autumn of 1892, Lalayants returned to Kazan, continuing revolutionary propaganda in social democratic circles among students and young workers. Together with local Marxists, he studied the works of Marx, Engels, Plekhanov and Kautsky. He also led heated discussions with the Narodniks.
Lalayants translated Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) and Kautsky's The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx (1887). He managed to establish contact with the publishing house J. W. H. Dietz (owned by SPD politician Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Dietz) in Stuttgart and to receive Marxist literature from there. "I personally" writes Lalayants, "was able to receive by mail directly from Dietz from Stuttgart, also in German, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Fr. Engels. Thanks to some cunning Dietz (according to my warning about our customs censorship) Engels's book was skillfully woven into some 'double-entry bookkeeping' of some Schmidt, as a result of which it slipped across our border as a completely innocent thing. The gendarmerie seized it from me at the time of my arrest, half translated by me".
Work with young Lenin
In January 1893, Lalayants was arrested again and deported to Samara, where he spends the first days at the apartment of former Narodnaya Volya member Nikolay Dolgov, getting acquainted with Lenin and, through him, with Alexei Sklyarenko and other local Marxists. Lalayants recalls his first meeting with Lenin as follows: "The next day (after coming to Samara) I went to Dolgov's. [...] Then someone knocked on the door – a young man around 22–23 years old entered. In front of me stood a man with unusual appearance, somehow immediately disposing himself. It was V. I. Ulyanov. He really impressed me then. In this twenty-three-year-old man, simplicity, sensitivity, cheerfulness and shyness, on the one hand, and solidity and depth of knowledge, ruthless logical sequence, lucidity and clarity of judgments and definitions, on the other, were combined in an amazing way. Samara immediately ceased to seem to me such a wilderness, and after that first meeting I was glad that I chose it myself".
In Samara, Lalayants entered the illegal social democratic circle led by Lenin. Together with Lenin and Sklyarenko, he conducts extensive propaganda work (mainly among students and workers in railway workshops), also against the representatives of Narodism.
In June 1894, Lalayants receives a sentence in the Kazan case: 10 months of solitary confinement and 3 years of public surveillance. He was arrested and sent to Kresty Prison in Saint Petersburg. Learning about the fact that Lalayants is in the "Saint Petersburg Prison for Solitary Confinement" (official name under Imperial Russia), Lenin, through the student Olga Ivanovna Chachina, establishes contact with him, sending him literature (The Development of the Monist View of History (1895) by Georgi Plekhanov, among others). "Thanks to the care of Vladimir Ilyich, I was a bit aware of at least the newly published legal literature" recalls Lalayants.
Upon liberation on 24 April 1895, Lalayants meets with Lenin and goes to Moscow, where he visits Lenin's relatives. "All... evening and part of the next day," writes Lalayants, "we were always together. From the stories of V. I., I learned a lot of interesting things about the life and work of the Petersburg circles; in particular, about the clandestine literary work of Vladimir Ilyich. From his words, I could conclude that in St. Petersburg, at that time, propaganda and even agitation work was quite firmly and widely established, especially among the workers of large factories; he also talked a lot about Materials for the Characterization of Our Economic Development (collection of articles), prepared for release, and about the disputes with Struve, about his relations with him. For me, the active and leading role of Vladimir Ilyich in all these works began to appear with sufficient clarity, although he himself did not stress it at all". Lalayants leaves for Penza.
In September 1895, Lenin wrote a letter to Lalayants about his return from abroad. Lalayants hastens to Moscow to meet with Lenin. Returning to Penza after his meeting, he brings with him Lenin's illegal Marxist literature of foreign publication and a copy of Materials for the Characterization of Our Economic Development, which includes Lenin's work The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of it in Mr. Struve's Book, published under the pseudonym K. Tulin. Lenin commissions Lalayants to continue his revolutionary work in the proletarian center of Ekaterinoslav.
Revolutionary activity in Ekaterinoslav
Towards the end of September 1895, Isaak Lalayants moved to Ekaterinoslav with his wife and revolutionary Praskovia Ivanovna Kulyabko. On their way to Moscow, Lalayants meets with Lenin and receives a letter of recommendation from him. "On the same day," writes Lalayants, "he managed to get a letter for me to one of the responsible workers in the Ekaterinoslav Railroad Administration – this is already a part of presenting me with some earnings, which was very significant for me as someone under surveillance, moreover in a completely unfamiliar city".
In Ekaterinoslav –in the large workers' center of the south of RussiaIn Ekaterinoslav and its surroundings at that time there were about 25,000 workers.– Lalayants conducted large revolutionary work among factory and railway workers. He takes an active role in the creation of the local League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class and in the preparations for the first congress of the RSDLP.
In the early spring of 1897, Lalayants, together with Ivan Babushkin –a faithful pupil of Lenin exiled to Ekaterinoslav–, restore local Marxist circles (Lalayants leads the Ekaterinoslav "Central Social Democratic Group", and Babushkin, the workers' group) and in December 1897 unite them in one social democratic organisation called the Ekaterinoslav League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. For three or four years, Babushkin, Lalayants, Grigory Petrovsky, Mikhail Tskhakaya, Kazymyr Adamovich Petrusevych, P. A. Morozov, and other experienced revolutionaries, under strict clandestinity, save the local social democratic organisation from failure.
Comrades of Lalayants in the underground struggle characterized him as a man with great organisational talent, who managed for several years to lead the Ekaterinoslav social democrats. Through Lalayants, Babushkin and others, the Ekaterinoslav League, closely associated with the St. Petersburg League, receives literature from them and distributes it.
Following the example of St. Petersburg League, the Ekaterinoslav League takes the path of transition to mass agitation; launches extensive organisational, agitation and propaganda activities among the workers, and seeks to expand its activities to neighboring cities, contributing to the emergence of social democratic circles in the Donbas.
In the publications and leaflets of the Ekaterinoslav League, widely distributed among the proletarians, the League talks about the urgent needs of the workers, the need for an organised struggle against tsarism and capitalism. Along with the St. Petersburg League, the Ekaterinoslav League is one of the first to start laying the revolutionary traditions of the mass social democratic labour movement.
In March 1898, Ekaterinoslav League representative Kazymyr Petrusevych attends the first congress of the RSDLP, which forms the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Returning to Ekaterinoslav after the congress, Petrusevych presents the resolutions of the congress to Lalayants and is arrested that same night. At a meeting of local social democrats, Lalayants reports on the first congress of the RSDLP. It is decided to reorganise the Ekaterinoslav League into the "Ekaterinoslav Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party".
In January 1899, the Ekaterinoslav social democrats, addressing the Ekaterinoslav workers with a special proclamation on the occasion of the First Congress, wrote: "So, comrades, we will strive hard for the best part and we will wholeheartedly rejoice at the emergence of the workers' party as a messenger of a better future".
After almost three years of staying and working in Ekaterinoslav, Lalayants goes to Tbilisi and Voronezh. At the end of the summer of 1899, he returns to Ekaterinoslav and resumes his work at the local party committee. Together with Ivan Babushkin and Mikhail Tskhakaya, he conducts a struggle against the so-called "Economists" to unite local social democrats on Marxist positions. At that time, the Ekaterinoslav Committee had about 25 propaganda circles, which united up to 200 advanced workers. The committee, led by Babushkin, Lalayants, Tskhakaya, and Grigory Petrovsky, educated them in the spirit of a political struggle for the fundamental interests of the working class, and directed the strike movement.
Creation of Yuzhny Rabochy In January 1900, on the initiative of Babushkin and Lalayants, the illegal social democrat newspaper Yuzhny Rabochy (The Southern Worker) begins to be published, which played an important role in the development of the revolutionary workers' movement in southern Russia. The first editors of Yuzhny Rabochy are Lalayants, A. A. Mashitsky and S. K. Kharchenko. "...In January 1900, the long-awaited newspaper Yuzhny Rabochy finally came out" recalls Ivan Babushkin. "At the workers' committee meeting it was partially read. [...] At the Bryansk factory, workers found one copy and were very surprised by the content: "Look, it's like a real newspaper! There, and even chronicles and correspondence!" And then they went to a secluded place to read the newspaper. This first newspaper remained in their memory for a long time and raised the mood, as they saw that, in spite of the arrests, the activity not only did not decrease, but, on the contrary, everything became more skillful and strong".