Alexander Dubrovin

A trained doctor, Dubrovin gave up his practice to concentrate on opposing what he saw as creeping liberalism in the Russian aristocracy, turning his own movement, the Russian Assembly, over to the newly formed URP in 1905, when he was appointed head of the new group's directorate. Both anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic he believed in the Zhidomasonstvo (Judeo-Masonic) conspiracy and took the lead in organising the pogroms of the Black Hundreds.

Gaining a popular following amongst the peasants, petite bourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat for his demagogy, Dubrovin sat in the State Duma of the Russian Empire despite being a firm believer in absolutism and before organising a failed boycott of the Third Duma in 1907. Closely involved in the trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis, as later described in Bernard Malamud's novel The Fixer, Dubrovin himself fell foul of the law when his tendency towards violence saw him indicted for the murder of a fellow Duma member.

In the URP, Dubrovin was the leader of an extreme faction based around the Russkoe znamya newspaper and in 1910, that became the base of his support when the majority faction of the URP fell under Nikolai Markov. With Dubrovin somewhat lacking in charisma and seen as somewhat unbalanced, his faction fell into insignificance.

According to Philip Rees Dubrovin was shot in 1918 for his activities against the October Revolution. A number of other sources however place Dubrovin alive after this date and his actual date of death remains unresolved. On October 21, 1920 Dubrovin was arrested in Moscow by Cheka. He was charged as an organizer of pogroms, murders etc. in 1905—1917 when he was the chairman of URP. In their entirety these corpus delicti (components of crime) were qualified under the Criminal Code Article "the counter-revolutionary activity". No activity after the 1917 has been incriminated to Dubrovin.

Dubrovin’s files at FSB archives keep two consecutive death sentences dated December 29, 1920 and April 21, 1921 which indicates that at least one time Dubrovin’s applied for amnesty was satisfied. No documental traces of the actual implementation of this sentence were found. Meanwhile, the Small Soviet Encyclopedia published in 1929 showed Dubrovin as still alive by that date.