GOTS

GOTS, Russian revolutionary family. ABRAM RAFAILOVICH GOTS (1882–1937 or 1940) was born in Moscow into the family of a wealthy tea merchant; from 1906 Gots was an active member of the fighting organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) party and a member of its central committee. For his participation in the planning of a terrorist act in 1907 he was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. After the February 1917 Revolution he led the SR faction in the Petrograd soviet. In June 1917 at the First Congress of Soviets he was elected chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Following the October Revolution Gots joined the anti-Bolshevik Committee for Saving the Homeland and the Revolution. He was an organizer of the armed attack of the junkers (cadets) which took place in Petrograd. November 11–12, 1917. At the 4th Congress of SRS (November 1917) he defended the right to resort to terror against the forces which had usurped the rights of the Constituent Assembly. In 1920 he was arrested and in 1922 sentenced to execution, which was subsequently changed to five years imprisonment. In 1927 he was exiled, first to Simbirsk and then to Alma-Ata. In 1937 he was arrested again. According to some sources, he was shot together with Mark Liber in Alma-Ata. In Soviet political literature his name always appears as part of the trio "Gots-Liber-Dan" (see fyodor dan ) whom Lenin referred to as "social defenders," i.e. leaders of socialist parties who advocated the continuation of the war after the February Revolution. His brother, MIKHAIL RAFAILOVICH GOTS (literary pseudonym, M. Rafailov; 1866–1906), entered Moscow University in 1885, but in the following year was arrested for revolutionary activities, and in 1888 was exiled to Eastern Siberia for 8 years. For armed resistance to the authorities in Yakutsk in 1889, during which he was wounded, he was sentenced to permanent exile, but in 1895 received amnesty. He lived in Kurgane, and then in Odessa where he took up literary activities. In 1901 Gots emigrated to Paris where, in collaboration with other revolutionaries, he published the journal Vestnik russkoy revolyutsii. From the establishment of the SR party (in late 1901) until his death, Gots was one of the heads of the party. In 1902 he moved to Geneva where he helped to publish the central organ of the SRS Revollyutsionnaya Rossiya. Gots' apartment in Geneva served as SR headquarters and he himself directed all party work. In 1903 when visiting Italy, Gots was arrested at the request of the Russian government but due to a campaign in the European socialist and radical press he was freed and deported to Switzerland. The money he received from rich relatives he used for party purposes. Apart from articles, he published a book: on criticism, dogma, theory, and practice. (Mark Kipnis / The Shorter Jewish Encyclopaedia in Russian)