Pēteris Stučka, sometimes Russified to Pyotr Stuchka; (26 July [O.S. 14 July] 1865 – 25 January 1932), was a Latvian jurist and communist politician, leader of the pro-Bolshevik puppet government in Latvia during the 1918–1920 Latvian War of Independence, and later a statesman in the Soviet Union.
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Biography
Stučka was born in Latvia, in the Governorate of Livonia (then part of the Russian Empire). His father was a prosperous farmer, his mother was a teacher. He was educated in a German lyceum in Riga, and then St Petersburg University, where he studied law. After graduating in 1888, he returned to Latvia, where he practised as a lawyer, and was one of the leaders of the New Current movement in the late 19th century, a prolific writer and translator, and an editor of Latvian language newspapers and periodicals. He was arrested in 1897, and sentenced to five years exile in Vyatka province, where he was allowed to continue practising law. When the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party split into its Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, Stučka supported the Bolsheviks, who were led by Vladimir Lenin. In 1904, he was one of the organisers of the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party, which held its first congress clandestinely in Riga.
After the February Revolution, which overthrew the Tsar, Stučka backed Lenin's April Theses, which called for a second, Bolshevik-led revolution, and organised the detachment of Latvian riflemen who played a crucial role in the October Revolution.