Hessen I. V. (1865/66-1943), public figure

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HESSEN Iosif Vladimirovich (1865-1943), lawyer, public and political figure. In 1885 he enrolled at the Faculty of Law of the Petersburg University, and was arrested the same year for ties with People's Liberty and exiled to Ust-Sysolsk. Upon his return from exile, in 1889, he took the exams for the Law Faculty, passing all the required exams, without having attended the lectures. Lived in St. Petersburg from 1895. In 1898-1918, he was the publishing editor of the Pravo journal, in addition to writing legal theory. From 1903 Hessen assumed the post of attorney at law. An active participant in the liberal movement, he was a member of the Conversation discussion circle (1901), co-founder and member of the Liberation Movement Council in 1904. He was also involved in the establishing of the Constitutional-Democratic Party (1905), acting as Deputy Chairman of its Petersburg Committee, and from 1906 upon entering the Central Committee co-edited the party newspapers Narodnaya Svoboda and Rech. Hessen was also engaged as Executive Director of the Petersburg Public Benefit Publishing House, specialising in publishing literature of social and political content. Throughout his political career he acted in the capacity of a St. Petersburg representative in the Second State Duma (1907), being appointed a Cadet (Constitutional-Democratic) faction Deputy Chairman, simultaneously he chaired the local court of commission. From late 1914, Hessen assumed the chairmanship of the All-Russian Editors League and in 1917 was elected a member of the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic. In February 1919, he emigrated to Finland, later moved to Germany. Heading the Slovo Publishing House from 1920, Hessen also edited the newspaper Rul in Berlin, published Arkhiv Russkoy Revolyutsii (The Archive of the Russian Revolution) (volumes 1-22), which contained valuable material on the history of Russia of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. From 1936, he resided in France, from 1942 in the United States.

References: Гессен В. Ю. Жизнь и деятельность И. В. Гессена - юриста, публициста и политика. СПб., 2000.

D. D. Bogoyavlensky. Hessen Iosif Vladimirovich
Гессен В. Ю. Жизнь и деятельность И. В. Гессена - юриста, публициста и политика. СПб., 2000 Narodnaya Volya
Rech (The Speech), newspaper
State Duma