Vladimir Potemkin

Vladimir Petrovich Potemkin (; 19 October [O.S. 7 October] 1874 – 23 February 1946) was a Soviet statesman, historian, educator, diplomat, academic and scholar who served as the People's Commissar of Education of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic fom 1940 to 1946. Early life and education Potemkin was born into a family of doctors. In 1893, he graduated from the Tver gymnasium in 1893 and entered the History and Philology faculty of Imperial Moscow University. While studying in the university he was active in the student movement and distributed illegal literature among other students. He was arrested for his revolutionary activities and imprisoned in the Butyrka prison. Potemkin eventually graduated from the university in 1898 and obtained his professorship later on and became a teacher at the Moscow School of the Order of St Catherine. Early career From 1903, he reentered the revolutionary movement and actively participated in the First Russian Revolution. Potemkin who was a teacher of a women's gymnasium in Yekaterinoslav was expelled and sent to Moscow.