Kishkin

KISHKIN Nikolai Mikhailovich (1864-1930), physician, prominent Moscow public figure. Prior to the revolution, K. worked in Moscow as a physiotherapist; he founded one of the first physiotherapy clinics in Moscow. Aligning with liberal groups of the intelligentsia, K. served for many years as a member of the Moscow City Duma, participating in various public initiatives of the time and joining the Constitutional Democratic Party. During World War I, K. headed the All-Russian Union of Cities, performing virtually all duties related to managing the union's medical and sanitary activities. After the February Revolution of 1917, K. was appointed by the Provisional Government as the commissar of the city of Moscow; in September 1917, K. was brought into the Kerensky government as Minister of the Interior. Arrested along with other members of the Provisional Government during the October days when the Winter Palace was seized, K. was subsequently released, but was later involved in the case of the so-called "tactical center" (a counter-revolutionary organization of 1919). In 1921, K., along with other representatives of the liberal intelligentsia (Prokopovich, Kuskova, etc.), organized the "Committee for Aid to the Starving"; however, due to the intention of the committee's leaders to use it for the struggle against Soviet power, the committee was dissolved. In his final years, pardoned from further punishment by amnesty, K. returned to medical practice, working in the Resort Administration of the People's Commissariat of Health.