Tsoyrif, Dina Isaakovna (1900-1937)

Dora Isaakovna Tsoyrif was born into a Jewish family in Kiev. There is some confusion about the name of her father as her patronymic is sometimes given as Nikolaevna. In addition she used the first name of Dina in preference to Dora.  Her sisters and brothers ended up in Odessa, Kiev, and the USA. She graduated from a gymnasium (high school) and became an anarchist communist in 1917. She participated in an anarchist detachment in Ukraine and the Don during the Civil War in 1918.

In 1924 she was arrested by the Soviet authorities for anarchist activities and was imprisoned in Butyrskaya prison. On April 4th she was sentenced to two years of exile in the Urals. Prior to her exile she had completed two courses at the Institute of Child Defectology. In 1925 she received a restriction of residence for the rest of her sentence and settled in Saratov along with her husband Nikolai Alexandrovich Viktorov (1899-no earlier than 1936) (1) and their small child. In exile in Saratov she met fellow exile Lydia Chukovskaya (see the Anarchist Underground In Leningrad at libcom). In 1926 she was in Surgut and in 1929 returned to Saratov. In the 1930s she worked as a statistician at the Bureau of Medical Examination in Leningrad.

She was arrested on October 28th 1932 “for organising and participating in an anarchist organisation”. She had organised an underground anarchist group with Viktorov, Veniamin Rakov and Yuri Kochetov, and others. On December 8th she was sentenced to 3 years and sent to Yaroslavl. After serving this sentence she was sent for three exile to Arkhangelsk. In 1937 she was arrested for supposed involvement in the plot cooked up by the NKVD group involving “counter-revolutionaries” around the Left SR Boris Kamkov. She was shot on October 23rd 1937 after a death sentence by a NKVD troika.

Nick Heath

Sources:
 Victims of political terror in the USSR, 4th edition: http://lists.memo.ru/index.htm
https://www.geni.com/people/%D0%94%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B0-%D0%A6%D0%BE%D0%B9%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%84/6000000042925355004
http://www.s-a-u.org/history/anarhy/1059-anarchist-chronograph-october-part-2.html
http://www.libed.ru/knigi-nauka/700995-11-yuriy-doykov-arhangelskie-teni-po-arhivam-fsb-tom-1908-1942-arhangelsk-2008-doykov-yuriy-arhangelskie-ten.php

Note

(1)  “An anarchist of many years standing, recently completed his term of exile in the village of Samarovo. Instead of being liberated he was sent for six months to prison in Tobolsk, Siberia, for allegedly ‘insulting a policeman,’ whom he had called gendarme. At the expiration of that new sentence, was he liberated? Oh, no! In accordance with  the established policy of the G.P.U. he has now been exiled together with his wife [Tsoyrif DI] and small child to Saratov. Not being members of any union, neither Victorov nor his wife are able to secure work; on the other hand, they cannot join any union because as exiles they are forbidden by Bolshevik law to do so. Both are entirely without means of subsistence, and their case is further aggravated by Victorov’s illness.” (see The Guillotine at Work p. 575).