Maurice Conradi

Maurice Conradi Russian: Морис Морисович Конради (16 June 1896, in Saint Petersburg − 7 February 1947, in Chur, Switzerland), was a Russian White movement officer who fought in World War I and Civil War in Russia, and in 1923 killed Vatslav Vorovsky, a member of the Bolshevik delegation to the Lausanne conference.

Conradi was born in Saint Petersburg to a family of Swiss businessmen, owners of a chocolate factory established in 1853 by Conradi's grandfather. Upon the outbreak of World War I he joined the Russian Imperial Army with the personal permission of Nicholas II and fought on the Eastern front. During the Bolshevik Revolution most of his family was killed: his father was executed in Saint Petersburg on 26 November 1919, his brother Victor taken hostage and executed in 1918, and two further siblings disappeared during the Red Terror. After the unsuccessful campaign of the Wrangel Army he moved to Switzerland, radicalized against the Bolshevik government and planning revenge.

Murder of Vorovsky

In April 1923 Conradi attempted an assassination of Bolshevik foreign affairs commisar Georgy Chicherin while he visited Germany, but unable to find him he returned to Geneva. Finding out about the upcoming conference, he planned another assassination. Vatslav Vorovsky, Ivan Ariens and Maxim Divilkovsky were delegates of the Bolshevik government to the 1923 Conference of Lausanne. On 10 May 1923 Conradi and his companion Arkady Polunin (Аркадий Павлович Полунин) entered the restaurant of the Hotel Cecil, shooting the Bolshevik delegation. Vorovsky was killed at the scene, and Ariens and Divilkovsky were wounded but survived.

The murder was presented by the Soviet press as a conspiracy of "fascist White radicals", in spite of the fact that Vorovsky represented the Bolsheviks in Italy and after his death Benito Mussolini was one of those sending condolences. The trial of Conradi and Polunin was held in Geneva and quickly turned into a trial of the whole Bolshevik movement, with Conradi widely supported by many White émigrés and Russian activists in exile, including Ivan Bunin, Ivan Shmelyov and Dmitry Merezhkovsky.

Statements of witnesses, who volunteered to defend Conradi, described the atrocities of the Bolshevik Revolution and Red Terror and attracted the attention of worldwide media.[4] The prosecution was represented arguments of Italian communists and Bolshevik officials, who argued how happy life in Soviet Russia became after the Revolution. Defended by Théodore Aubert, Conradi pleaded not guilty and was finally acquitted.

Further life

Conradi served in the French Foreign Legion and information about his death circulated in newspapers in 1931. He however returned safely and lived in Switzerland until he died on 7 February 1947 in Chur.

Conradi's surviving victims — Ariens and Divilkovsky — returned to the Soviet Union and held various positions in the administration. Ariens was executed in 1937 during Great Purge, while Divilkovsky died as a soldier in 1942.