Minor, Osip S.
MINOR, OSIP S.
MINOR, OSIP S. (Joseph ; 1861–1932), Russian revolutionary and a leader of the Social Revolutionary Party. Born in Minsk, he was the son of Rabbi S.Z. *Minor. While still a student at the University of Moscow, he joined the "People's Will" (Narodnaya Volya) Society. In 1883 he was arrested for the first time, and in 1887 he was exiled to Siberia. After participating in a rebellion of exiles in Yakutsk, he was sentenced to forced labor for life (1889). Freed in 1896, he was banned from living in European Russia. In 1900 he nevertheless returned to Russia and settled in Vilna. He resumed his revolutionary activities, traveled abroad, and was one of the organizers of the Social Revolutionary Party. In 1909 he was again arrested as a result of the intervention of the czarist agent Y.F. *Azeff and was sentenced to ten years' forced labor. He was freed at the time of the Revolution of 1917 and was briefly mayor of Moscow. Minor left Russia in 1919 after the Bolshevik victory and settled in France, where he became chairman of the Society for Assistance to Exiles and Political Prisoners in Russia. He died in Paris. His book Eto bylo davno ("It Was Long Ago") appeared posthumously in 1933.
bibliography:
Sotsialisticheskiy Vestnik, 19 (1932), 16; V. Chernov, Yidishe Tuer in der Partey Sotsial Revolutsionern (1948), 246–58.
[Yehuda Slutsky]