Semyon Barovsky (or Samuel Barkovsky)
Born: 1893, Chernihiv, Russia (present-day Ukraine)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Ukrainian
Occupation: Machinist
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
Became an active member of the Socialist Party of America, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Ansonia, Connecticut branch of the Union of Russian Workers. He served as chairman of Luch, a URW front functioning as a mutual-aid society, and was a delegate to the 1919 URW convention. Arrested in June 1919 in Ansonia for “breach of the peace” connected to URW-led strike agitation, and arrested again in Hartford in November 1919, where authorities discovered a large cache of anarchist literature in his home. He was deported on the Buford on December 21, 1919.
Sources: INS file 54709/405; FBI file OG 8000-364023.
Stanislaw Bartesiewics (a.k.a. Stanley Barton; Joe Rink, Joe Rynkiewich)
Born: 1888, Lithuanian territrories of the Russian Empire
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Polish
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
As a young man he shot and killed a woman under unclear circumstances and fled to the United States in 1899, where his wife joined him. That same year he was extradited back to Russia, convicted, and imprisoned for three years and seven months, during which time his wife remained in the United States and divorced him. He re-entered the U.S. in 1915 and joined the Lithuanian section of the Communist Party of America. In Detroit in 1920 he was denounced as a violent Communist to federal agents by his second wife Julia, as well as his brother George and sister-in-law. Arrested during the January 1920 Palmer Raids, he was deported on January 20, 1921.
Sources: INS file 54861/6; FBI file OG 382016.
Ivan Baskevich (or John Baskevich)
Born: 1897, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913
Affiliation: Communist Party of America
Though he held socialist ideas in Russia, he had belonged to no organization prior to emigration. Shortly after his arrival he joined the Socialist Party of America and later became financial secretary of Cleveland’s Russian Branch No. 1 of the Communist Party of America. Arrested in January 1920 and deported to Soviet Russia on February 26, 1921.
Sources: INS file 54859/943.
Aleksandr Ivanovich Batura
Born: Year unknown, Polish territories of the Russian Empire
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Polish
Occupation:
Migration: Immigrated to US year unknown
Affiliation: Anarchist; IWW
An anarchist and member of the IWW, he was arrested in Steubenville, Ohio, and deported to Poland on September 10, 1924.
Upon return to Soviet territory he openly criticized living conditions and declared that “only Commissars and not workers live well here.” For these remarks he was sentenced to the Solovetsky prison camp and subsequently to internal exile. In correspondence circa 1927 he wrote to comrades in the U.S. reporting: “The main thing is that I have no work and it is so hard to get anything. I have been actually starving here, moreover, I am sick.” International anarchist networks sent him aid between 1929 and 1931.
Sources: Pittsburgh Gazette Times, September 6, 1924; Senya Fleshin Papers, International Institute for Social History; G. P. Maximoff, The Guillotine at Work: Twenty Years of Terror in Russia (Data and Documents).
Morris Becker
Born: 1885, Kiev, Russia (present-day Ukraine)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Jewish
Occupation:
Migration: Immigrated to US 1906
Affiliation: Anarchist
Supporter of Alexander Berkman’s The Blast and participated in the No-Conscription League. One of the first individuals arrested under the Selective Service Act of 1917, he received a sentence of one year and eight months in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary for interfering with the draft. He described himself as “a man without a country,” an anarchist, and “an advocate of peace and not of force.” Deported on the Buford on January 21, 1919.
In Petrograd he secured factory employment but complained of poor conditions, prompting accusations that he was a “pampered bourgeois” nostalgic for “capitalist America.” After a decade of silence, he sent a coded letter to Alexander Berkman in 1931.
Sources: INS file 54235/32; Emma Goldman, Living My Life; Alexander Berkman Papers, International Institute for Social History.
Max Belesky
Born: 1888, Odessa, Russia (present-day Ukraine)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Jewish
Occupation: Carpenter
Migration: Immigration to US 1913
Affiliation: Communist Party of America
Left behind a wife and three children in Russia. In Detroit he joined Russian Branch No. 3 of the Socialist Party of America, which later became a Communist Party of America branch. Arrested in January 1920, he accepted “voluntary departure” and returned to Russia on October 16, 1920.
Sources: INS file 54859/752.
Emelyan Belesta (a.k.a. Michael, Andrew, or Andriev Belesta)
Born: 1886, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigration to Canada 1912; then to US 1916
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
His wife remained in Russia while he emigrated to Canada. From there he entered the United States without inspection. Joined the Union of Russian Workers in Pittsburgh around 1918 and was described as taking a “prominent” role in local radical meetings. Arrested in 1919 in possession of substantial quantities of radical literature, he was released on bail only to be arrested again for distributing a handbill calling for a nationwide general strike “to enforce the the lifting of the blockade against Russia.” He was deported on the Buford on December 21, 1919.
He died of typhus in Ufa at an unknown date.
Sources: INS file 54616/134; INS file 54616/89; New-York Tribune, October 4, 1919; Delo Truda, December 1937–February 1938.
Bezil Belousov (or Basil Belusoff)
Born: 1881, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation:
Migration:
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
Had a wife and three children in Russia. Joined the Union of Russian Workers in 1919 and was arrested in Fairmont, West Virginia, that November. Told immigration authorities he had joined the URW while drunk. Deported on the Buford on December 21, 1919.
Sources: INS file 54709/593.
Demyan Belowky
Born: 1882, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigration to US in 1915
Affiliation: Communist Party of America
Joined the Communist Party in Detroit and was deported on March 18, 1921.
Sources: INS file 54850/994; FBI file OG 382092.
William Bendik (or Bendick)
Born: 1894, Grodno, Russia (present-day Belarus)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Belarusian
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigration to US in 1912
Affiliation: Socialist Party of America or Socialist Labor Party
Although he claimed membership in Russian Branch No. 2 of the Socialist Party in Cleveland, authorities noted that he possessed Socialist Labor Party literature at the time of his 1919 arrest. Neither organizational affiliation legally qualified him for deportation. Instead, the case was built on allegations that after the police attacked a 1919 May Day demonstration, he boasted: “We only gave them a demonstration of what we will do July 4th; we will be prepared and have ammunition and everything, and we will show them what we will do.” Deported on December 21, 1919 on the Buford.
Sources: INS file 54616/235; FBI file OG 372982.
