“Russian life is not so bad as not to offer good people work”: the destiny of N. P. Okulov, deputy of the State duma

This biographical study traces the key stages in the life of Nikolai Pavlovich Okulov who belonged to the Russian intelligentsia and was deputy of the Second State Duma for the town of Tsarizyn. In writing this profile the author resorted to previously unknown documents from the political police of the Russian Empire and the archives of the former Soviet state security. The emphasis is made on N.P. Okulov’s transformation from a provincial teacher who would propagate revolutionary ideas among the city’s poorest population into a politician of national scale with broad democratic views. The author underlines that both his success and failures in his public career were predetermined by the social and political situation in Russia at the beginning of the XX century. The circumstances of filing a case against N.P. Okulov on the charge of “anti-Soviet propaganda” and the course of investigation and trial in 1938 are being disclosed and presented for the first time.