Nikolai Mansevich (a.k.a. Nicholas)
Born: 1886, Biaroza, Russia (present-day Belarus)
Nationality: Polish
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Autoworker
Migration: Immigrated to US circa 1911
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
An employee of the Ford Motor Company, Mansevich lived in Hamtramck, Michigan with his wife and four American-born daughters. A member of Detroit’s URW Branch No. 3 and distributor of the paper Volna, he was arrested in September 1921. Despite a large national defense campaign and press coverage, he was deported June 7, 1924 to Poland.
Letters he sent his wife in 1926 described “intense suffering,” including frostbitten feet while working in a lumber camp. His wife, meanwhile, was ill and dependent on welfare assistance. At an unknown date (one source suggests around 1940) he migrated to Canada and worked as a farmer. It appears he never reunited with his wife and children, who remained in Detroit. He died in Windsor, Ontario, in 1960.
Sources: INS file 55119/18; Agnes Inglis Papers, Joseph A. Labadie Collection, University of Michigan; The New Republic, September 17, 1924; The Windsor Star, March 10, 1960; Ancestry.com.
Vito Mariani
Born: 1882, Morra Irpina (present-day Morra De Sanctis), Italy
Nationality: Italian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to US c. 1910
Affiliation: Anarchist
An anarchist from his youth, Mariani became a prominent activist in Lynn, Massachusetts, and later Bridgeport, Connecticut, closely associated with Luigi Galleani’s Cronaca Sovversiva. Arrested May 30, 1914 in El Paso for a radical speech during a lecture tour, he was held for deportation but released. Between about 1917 and 1919 he moved to New York and became editor of Il Refrattario and coeditor of Il Diritto with Raffaele Schiavina. Arrested February 1920 under New York’s criminal anarchy law, he was deported June 29, 1920.
In Italy in 1921 he was sentenced to two years for avoiding the draft. In 1924 he was a subscriber to Errico Malatesta’s anarchist journal Pensiero e Voluntá, and two years later he married. Italian government reports noted “good conduct” and no political activity on his part, and he was removed from the list of subversives in 1932, but in 1936 authorities preventatively detained him while Mussolini visited Morra De Sanctis. Locally, Mariani was remembered as a militant antifascist who lectured peasants outside church and became “unanimously considered the civil and moral point of reference for an entire generation.” In 1946 he was elected to local government and led the creation of the town’s first middle school. He died in 1964.
Sources: INS file 54861/318; FBI file OG 8000-385978; CPC busta 3061; Un trentennio di attività anarchica (1915-1945); Harry Weinberger Papers, Yale University; Francesco de Rogatis et al., eds., Morra de Sanctis: Tra cronaca e storia ad un anno del terremoto.
Vakula Markovets
Born: Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation:
Migration:
Affiliation:
Deported (“voluntarily departed”) to Russia as a radical in September 26, 1920. No further information has been located.
Sources: INS file 54325/36G.
Sam Markowich
Born: 1899, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: wire puncher
Migration: Immigrated to US year unknown
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
An employee of the Spring Wire Company in Albion, Michigan, and member of the local branch of the Union of Russian Workers. Arrested November 7, 1919, in a local raid on the URW. Deported to Russia January 22, 1921.
Sources: INS file 54663/276; Jackson Evening News (Jackson MI), November 10, 1919; Detroit Free Press, January 11, 1920.
Ludwig Martens (born Ludwig Christian Alexander Karl Martens; a.k.a. Ludwig Karlovich Martens)
Born: 1874, Bachmut, Russia (present-day Ukraine)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: German
Occupation: Engineer; diplomat
Migration: Immigrated to US 1916
Affiliation: Russian Soviet Government Bureau
The son of a German factory owner, he joined the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class while a university student in Saint Petersburg. Arrested in 1896 and deported to Germany in 1899, he joined the German Social Democratic Party, the emigrated to England.
In the United States he became vice president of a New York engineering firm and joined the editorial board of the Socialist Party’s Russian-language newspaper Novy Mir. 1919 transferred into the Communist Party of America. Returned to Russia in 1917. In January 1919 he was appointed the official representative of the Soviet government in the US and returned to New York, though the United States refused him recognition. That March he established the Russian Soviet Government Bureau to negotiate contracts with American firms. Ordered deported in 1920, he left by “voluntary departure” January 22, 1921.
In the Soviet Union he served in the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy and later headed diesel-engine research and development. He retired with honors in 1941 and died in 1948.
Sources: FBI file OG 8000-377098; Frederick C. Giffin, “The Martens Mission,” International Social Science Review 73, no. 3/4 (1998); Todd J. Pfannestiel, Rethinking the Red Scare: The Lusk Committee and New York’s Crusade Against Radicalism, 1919-1923; G. Evgenev and B. Shapik, Revoliutsioner, diplomat, uchenyi (o L.K. Martens); https://web.archive.org/web/20220808190823/http:/deadlypass.com/wp/martens-ludwig-karlovich/; New York Times, October 22, 1948.
John Martin
Born: 1885, Hørsholm, Denmark
Nationality: Danish
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer; lumber worker
Migration: Immigrated to US 1910
Affiliation: Industrial Workers of the World
Joined the IWW in Seattle in 1916, later becoming branch secretary in Raymond, Washington and district secretary for the Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union No. 500. He helped lead the major 1917 lumber strike in the Northwest. A defendant in the federal IWW trial of 1917–1918, he was sentenced to ten years and a $30,000 fine. His sentence was later commuted on condition of deportation, and he was deported December 7, 1922.
Sources: INS file 54616/57; Industrial Workers of the World Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University; Stephen M. Kohn, American Political Prisoners: Prosecutions under the Espionage and Sedition Acts.
Tomás Martínez (a.k.a. Thomas Martinez)
Born: 1893, Mexico
Nationality: Mexican
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Miner
Migration: Migrated to US c. 1915
Affiliation: IWW
Martínez participated in the Mexican Revolution beginning in 1910, then joined the IWW in Sonora and organized miners in Cananea. In 1914 he was expelled from Sonora as a supposed Huerta supporter, prompting a strike of 2,500–3,000 miners until he was allowed to return.
From 1915 to 1918 he was active in IWW and Partido Liberal Mexicano circles in Arizona and Los Angeles and wrote extensively for the IWW paper El Rebelde. Arrested in Miami, Arizona, in March 1918, he was sentenced under the Espionage Act to two years in Leavenworth and a $500 fine. He contracted tuberculosis in prison, and a botched appendicitis operation caused septicemia. After release he requested permission to depart for a country other than Mexico, fearing execution for his revolutionary past, but the request was denied. Deported in 1921, he was reportedly near death when sent across the border.
He never recovered and died in Guadalajara October 23, 1921. Fellow activists buried him beneath a headstone reading: ¡Nunca olvidamos! (“We never forget!”)
Sources: INS file 54412/47 (missing); FBI file OG 240868; Tucson Citizen, April 15, 1914; Harry Weinberger Papers, Yale University; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society; Erie Labor Press, December 3, 1921; America: Numero Unico (Boston), January 1922.
Ivan Martinovsky (a.k.a. John Martinowski)
Born: 1887, Cherga, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to US 1909
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
Joined the URW branch in Rockville, Connecticut, September 1919 and became its secretary. Arrested during the first Palmer Raids in November 1919, he was deported on the Buford on December 21, 1919.
Sources: INS file 54709/260; FBI file OG 253632.
