Kamo

Kamo (Simon Arshaki Ter-Petrosian) [May 15 (27), 1882, Gori – July 14, 1922, Tbilisi] a Russian revolutionary of Armenian origin. Member of the RSDLP [Russian Social Democratic Labour Party] from 1901. Born in a merchant family, he distributed illegal literature starting in 1901 across Tbilisi, Baku, Kutaisi, Batumi, Gori, and other locations. He was one of the organizers behind the establishment of clandestine printing presses. In 1905, he participated in the formation of workers' combat detachments and clashed with military units in Tbilisi. In 1906, he met V. Lenin in St. Petersburg, and under his instruction he traveled abroad to smuggle weapons into Russia. To secure financial resources for the party, he executed several robberies of state treasury funds ("expropriations") between 1905 and 1907. The most significant among these occurred on June 13, 1907, in Tbilisi at Count Paskevich-Erevansky (modern Freedom) Square, involving an assault on two carriages of the city bank, an event recorded in history as the "Tiflis Expropriation" (securing 250,000 rubles).

In November 1907, he was arrested in Berlin. While imprisoned, Kamo feigned insanity; nevertheless, at the end of 1909, he was extradited to the Russian police. On August 15, 1911, Kamo managed to escape from the Metekhi Prison hospital in Tbilisi and, by Lenin's instruction, traveled to Paris, from where he directed the smuggling of party literature into Russia. Returning to Russia in 1912, he was quickly arrested and sentenced to death. Under the 1913 amnesty, his death sentence was commuted to 20 years of prison. He was released in March 1917. In 1919, he formed a partisan detachment behind White Guard lines, which fought against A. Denikin on the Southern Front. In April 1920, he participated in preparing the armed uprising to establish Soviet power in Baku. In 1920, he studied at the Moscow Military Academy. In 1921, he worked within the foreign trade system. On July 14, 1922, Kamo died under suspicious circumstances in Tbilisi (colliding with an automobile while riding a bicycle down the Vera Descent).

U. Bluashvili