Moisei Uritskii was in charge of the Cheka, the first manifestation of a secret police force under the Soviets, in Petrograd.  On 30 August 1918, he was assassinated by a young cadet called Leonid Kannegiser to strike a blow against the Bolsheviks and to avenge a friend who had recently been executed (in a move of violence actually unsupported by Uritskii).  Kannegiser was caught and executed, and his killing of Uritskii was a major factor in the upturn of the Red Terror.

While Uritskii was commemorated in street names, Kannegiser was commemorated in print: ten years after both deaths, his friends published the book whose cover is shown here.  The book has no named publisher but was printed in Paris by Imprimerie L. Beresniak.  It contains Kannegiser’s poems from 1912 to 1918, with the last, Snezhnaia tserkov’ (The snowy church) dated March 1918.

Leonid Kannegiser / statʹi Georgiia Adamovicha, M.A. Aldanova, Georgiia Ivanova. Iz posmertnykh stikhov Leonida Kannegisera (1928)  Ud.8.1147