Osinsky, Valeriian

Osinsky, Valeriian [Осінський, Валеріян; Osins'kij, Valerijan], b 10 November 1852 in Tahanrih, Oblast of the Don Cossack Host, d 26 May 1879 in Kyiv. Russian revolutionary. He studied at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineers (1871–2) and worked as a zemstvo administrator. In 1875 he became active in the populist movement of Petr Lavrov, but he was already an advocate of terrorism and soon became one of the leading members of Zemlia i Volia. He headed the (Southern) Executive Committee (a fictitious organization composed of himself and a few followers) of the Socialist Revolutionaries which directed terrorist attacks against tsarist officials in Kyiv (including the procurator M. Kotliarevsky) and conducted the successful rescue of leading revolutionary activists (L. Deich, Yakiv Stefanovych, and V. Bokhanovsky) from Lukianivka Prison in 1878. Osinsky was arrested in February 1879, sentenced by the court of the Kyiv Military District, and hanged.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]