Fedor Fedorovich Kokoshkin

Fyodor Fyodorovich Kokoshkin (, — ) was a Russian lawyer and politician, author of seminal works on jurisprudence, the First Russian State Duma deputy, and a founding member of the Russian Constitutional Democratic Party and the Controller general of the Russian Provisional Government. The playwright Fyodor Kokoshkin was his grandfather.

Biography

Born in Chełm, Lublin Governorate, Congress Poland, to the aristocratic family, Kokoshkin was educated first at the Vladimir Gymnasium which he graduated in 1889 with gold metal, then at the Moscow University where he stayed after the graduation later to become a privat-docent (1897) and professor (1907). In 1911 with a group of liberal-minded lecturers he left the university by way of a protest against the policies of Lev Kasso, the then Minister of Education.

A respected scholar of law, Kokoshkin did a lot to establish the theoretical basis for the proposed development of liberal state ruled by the law, emphasizing the need to limit the possibilities for the state's interference with the personal life of an individual. Among other issues he concentrated on in his essays were the decentralization of power, autonomy and federalism, as well as theoretical and practical ways of organizing local governments for Russian provinces.

Death Upon the arrival he was arrested by the Bolsheviks, warrants issued by the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, as one of the leaders of "the party of enemies of the people" and was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Suffering form tuberculosis, on 6 January 1918 he was transferred, along with his fellow Kadet Andrey Shingaryov, to the Mariinskaya Hospital. The following night both were murdered by a group of Baltic sailors, who broke into the hospital. "...And then 'they' came and killed him. Led by the soldier Basov, the one who took the money from me and who said he was going upstairs just to change guards... Some sailors stayed on the staircase, others went into the ward, killed Kokoshkin and instantly left. Nurses, frightened to death, knew not what to do. Other patients woke up and cried for help. Some ran downstairs and told the janitor... But at night the telephone line did not work. It was only in the morning, at 9, that they managed to inform Sofia Panina," Shingaryov's sister Alexandra Ivanovna remembered.

The Ministry of Justice later revealed that Basov justified the murder on the grounds that there would be 'two less bourgeois mouths to feed'. Basov was later brought to trial and convicted, but none of the murderers was ever caught and the Bolshevik leaders, who at first condemned the murders, later sought to justify them as an act of political terror.