Mike Legeze (or Legeza)

Born: 1890, Ułęż, Russia (present-day Poland)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to US 1916
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers

Joined the Hartford, Connecticut branch of the Union of Russian Workers in 1919. He was arrested during the first Palmer Raids in November 1919 and deported aboard the Buford on December 21, 1919.

Sources: INS file 54709/384.

Terentius Leonov (a.k.a. Thomas Leonoff)

Born: 1885, Minsk, Russia (present-day Belarus)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Shoemaker
Migration: Immigrated to US 1912
Affiliation: Socialist Party of America; Union of Russian Workers

Joined the Socialist Party of America in 1918 and the Bridgeport, Connecticut branch of the Union of Russian Workers in August 1919. Arrested during the first Palmer Raids in November 1919, he was deported aboard the Buford on December 21, 1919.

Sources: INS file 54709/377.

Mikail Leshchuk (a.k.a. Michael Lestchuk; Listchuk)

Born: 1891, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation:
Migration: Immigrated to US 1912
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers

Joined Philadelphia’s URW Branch No. 1 in early 1919 and became its secretary. Arrested during the first Palmer Raids in November 1919, he was deported aboard the Buford on December 21, 1919.

Sources: INS file 54709/210; FBI file OG 380953.

Arthur Lesiga (or Lessiga)

Born: 1889, Petrograd, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Sailor
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers

Joined the International Seamen’s Union and the Union of Russian Workers in New York in 1918. A Justice Department agent claimed he served as treasurer of the URW newspaper Rabochii i Krest’ianin. He lived in a common-law marriage with widow Jennie Garnitz, who had a young son. Arrested in Pittsburgh in July 1919 as a “notorious anarchist,” he was released on bail but rearrested December 3, 1919 and deported aboard the Buford on December 21.

In 1921 he signed a statement of the Union of Russian Anarchist Workers Repatriated from America, which critically supported Bolshevik rule as temporary. He was later arrested by the Soviet government at an unknown date.

Sources: INS file 54709/118; FBI file OG 371524; Victor Serge, Anarchists Never Surrender: Essays, Polemics, and Correspondence on Anarchism, 1908–1938; https://ru.openlist.wiki/%D0%9B%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%B0_%D0%90%D1%80%D1%82%D1%83%D1%80_%D0%90%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87_(1889).

Karl Lesse (a.k.a. Carl or Charles Lesse; Oswald Dönitz; Joseph Duncan)

Born: 1894, Hamburg, Germany
Nationality: German
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Sailor
Migration: Immigrated to US 1914
Affiliation: IWW

Left Germany at age fourteen and later joined the Sailor’s Union of the Pacific. In San Francisco in 1916 he joined the IWW and became a delegate. Arrested in February 1919 as “likely to become a public charge,” he was released on bail but rearrested in Arcata, California, in November 1919 for violating the state criminal syndicalism law. Convicted and sentenced to one to fourteen years, he was imprisoned at San Quentin from January 1920 to May 1922, then deported March 4, 1922.

In Germany he briefly joined the syndicalist Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschlands, then joined the Communist Party of German and worked as an underground agent for the Communist International’s Department of International Communications (OMS) in Europe and Shanghai during the 1920s and 1930s.

Sources: INS file 54616/17; Stephen M. Kohn, American Political Prisoners: Prosecutions under the Espionage and Sedition Acts; Brigitte Studer, Travellers of the World Revolution: A Global History of the Communist International; Barry McLoughlin et al., Kommunismus in Österreich, 1918–1938; Security Service: Personal (PF Series) Files, KV2/1399, National Archives, Kew, England.

Daniil Levchuk (a.k.a. Daniel Levozuk)

Born: 1874, Grodno, Russia (present-day Belarus)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Polish
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Migrated to Canada 1913; then to US 1915
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers

Levchuk, who had a wife and seven children in Russia, joined the Union of Russian Workers in Buffalo in 1918 and was sent as a delegate to its New York conference in January 1919. Arrested during the first Palmer Raids in November 1919, he was deported aboard the Buford on December 21, 1919.

Sources: INS file 54709/21.