A stamp depicting a portrait of one of the first Soviet diplomats and revolutionaries, Vaclav Vaclavovich Vorovsky, from the three-year USSR commemorative stamp series “In Memory of Figures of the Communist Party,” was issued in October 1933. Print run: 750,000 copies. Artist: Vasily Zavyalov.
V.V. Vorovsky was a Russian revolutionary, publicist, and literary critic, and one of the first Soviet diplomats. In April 1917, together with Ganetsky and Radek, he joined the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) in Stockholm, formed at Lenin’s suggestion (Lenin was passing through the city en route to Russia). The Bureau, among other things, served as a main channel for financing the party with German money via Parvus; correspondence with him was conducted through Berlin using German Foreign Ministry ciphers.
After Vorovsky left Sweden, the accounts of the Soviet mission in local banks held about 10 million kronor, and Vorovsky’s personal account held nearly 1.8 million kronor. In addition, he opened other accounts in European banks under fictitious names.
In 1919, Vorovsky returned to Russia, where he became one of the initiators of persecutions against the Orthodox Church.
From 1921, he served as plenipotentiary representative to Italy.
In 1922, he took part in the Genoa Conference.
In 1923, as part of the Soviet delegation, he traveled to Lausanne. On May 10, 1923, he was killed in the restaurant of the “Cecil” Hotel in Lausanne by a former White Guard member, Maurice Conradi. The killer’s lawyers turned the trial into a prosecution of Bolshevism. The court case, which gained wide international attention, acquitted M. Conradi by a vote of nine to five, deeming his act a just retribution against the Soviet regime for its crimes.
Diplomatic relations between the USSR and Switzerland were severed. He was buried on Red Square in Moscow in a mass grave.