Alexey Vladimirovich Ukhtomsky

Since 1927, Bolshaya Romanovka Street in Penza has borne the name of Alexey Vladimirovich Ukhtomsky — a revolutionary, steam locomotive engineer, and active participant in the December armed uprising of 1905 in Moscow.

Alexey Vladimirovich Ukhtomsky was born in a village in the Novgorod province. After finishing a vocational school, he worked at a ship repair plant in St. Petersburg and in locomotive depots in various cities.

From 1893 to 1897, Ukhtomsky lived in Penza on Bolshaya Romanovka Street and worked at the locomotive depot of the Penza station on the Syzran-Vyazma railway (now the locomotive depot of Penza I station, which bears his name). In Penza, Ukhtomsky worked as an assistant steam locomotive engineer and, after four years, began driving trains independently. It was here that he began his revolutionary activities. Here Ukhtomsky married, and a year after the wedding, he and his wife moved to Ufa, then to Kazan, and from there to the Moscow-Kazan railway.

According to his comrades, he was a young, handsome man with black mustaches. Workers loved him, but the authorities disliked him for his bold opinions and sharp remarks. The Tsarist police placed him under secret surveillance, persecuted him, and found illegal literature during searches.

The 1905 revolution caught Ukhtomsky on the Moscow-Kazan railway in the position of locomotive engineer.

Alexey Vladimirovich was the leader of the revolutionary strike committee of railway workers, and later one of the leaders of the combat squad of the Kazan railway. During the uprising in Moscow, he led the squad to completely seize control of the Moscow-Golutvin line, disarming the police there, cutting telegraph lines, and disarming military trains returning from Manchuria. He distinguished himself by managing, on December 14, to lead the squad members out of Moscow to Perovo, despite two ambushes set for him and heavy machine-gun fire. Soon after, however, he was arrested along with a group of six squad members by a punitive expedition.

On December 17, 1905, together with six other worker-squad members, he was shot without any trial or investigation in Lyubertsy.

Ukhtomsky faced death with extraordinary courage, astonishing even his executioners. At the place of execution, the captain of the punitive squad offered to blindfold him. He refused. Alexey Vladimirovich declared that he wished to meet death face to face. But before dying, he asked to send his coat and a note to his wife. “Farewell, my dear Sanya! Love and take care of my dear children and kiss them for me... We will not see each other again...”

According to the descendants of Ukhtomsky, now living in Zarechny, Alexey Vladimirovich had four children. Two died, leaving a son Vladimir and a daughter Antonina. The revolutionary’s comrades did not abandon the family of their comrade-in-arms. Both before and after the 1917 revolution, they helped his widow and children as much as they could.

In 1926, director Alexey Dmitriev made a feature film about our hero titled “Engineer Ukhtomsky.”