It was on 31 October, that Nikolay Bauman, a Russian revolutionary, was attacked and killed by a mob in 1905.
Bauman, born in Russia in 1873 to a family of German descent, was trained as a Veterinarian, but was drawn most passionately to political activity. He joined various underground workers organizations to oppose the imperial rule of the Tsars. While in St. Petersburg he joined the “Petersburg Alliance for the Liberation of the Working Class.” In 1897 Bauman was arrested and imprisoned, spending 22 months in solitary confinement, and used the time to read Karl Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’.
Bauman became active in the distribution of the revolutionary paper Iskra – “The Spark.” He met the Russian revolutionary V. I. Ulyanov (known as ‘Lenin’) and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In 1904 Bauman was again imprisoned, but a mass movement of working people secured the release of all political prisoners from Taganka jail where Bauman was incarcerated. Upon his release he was set upon by a mob organized by the notorious ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic group known as the ‘Black Hundreds’, they descended on Bauman and beat him to death. Bauman has been honored in his native land in a number of ways including the issuance of a postage stamp with his likeness, the naming of a Trade School and a Moscow Metro Station in his honor, in addition, several monuments can be found depicting him.