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Moisei Solomonovich Uritsky was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader whose assassination helped precipitate the Red Terror.

Moisei Solomonovich Uritsky (Моисей Соломонович Урицкий; 1873–August 17, 1918) was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader in Russia.

He was born in the town of Cherkasy, Ukraine, to a Jewish family. His father, a merchant, died when Moisei was little. Moisei's mother raised her son in a Jewish religious environment that was discriminated by Russian authorities.

Moisei studied at the University of Kiev. During his law studies he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and organized a network for importing and distributing political literature. In 1897 came arrest and exile for running an illegal mimeograph press. Becoming involved in the revolutionary movement, he participated in the revolutionary Jewish Bund. In 1903, he become a Menshevik. his activities in Petersburg during the 1905 revolution earned him a further term of exile. Along with Parvus he was active in dispatching revolutionary agents to infiltrate the Russian Tsarist security apparatus.

In 1914 he emigrated to France and contributed to the Party newspaper Our Word. Back in Russia in 1917 Uritsky was member of Mezhraiontsy group. A few months before the October Revolution of 1917, he joined to Bolsheviks, to whose Central Committee he was elected in July 1917. Uritsky played a leading part in the Bolsheviks' armed take-over in October. Later, he was made head of the Petrograd Cheka, or secret police. Under this position Uritsky coordinated the pursuit and prosecution of members of the high nobility, military officers and ranking clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church who opposed the Bolsheviks.

Because Uritsky was against the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, he resigned his charge in 1918, like Bukharin, Bubnov, Uritsky, Piatakov, Dzherzhinsky y Smirnov. On March 4, 1918 Petrogrado committee published the first number of the journal Kommunist, directed by Bukharin, Radek and Uritsky, and it was the public organ of the "left communist" opposition. The Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the bolshevik party was held March 6-8 1918, these Congress rejected the Theses on the Present Situation which had been submitted as a resolution by the "Left Communists". The "Left Communists" Bukharin, Lomov y Uritsky, who were elected to the Central Committee, stated at the Congress that they would not work in the Central Committee, and did not begin work there for several months in spite of the insistent demands of the Central Committee.

Civil war began on May 25, 1918, with the rise of the Czechoslovakian Legion. The capitalist world supported the "white armies" in whole country. Mirbach, German Ambassador in Moscow, was assassinated (July, 1918). Then Uritsky retook his post.

A young military cadet, poet and Orthodox Christian with Jewish ancestry converted to Christianity and German ancestors of lower nobility, Leonid Kanegeiser, assassinated Uritsky on August 17, 1918 in retaliation for the execution of his friend and other officers. Following this event, along with the assassination attempt on Vladimir Lenin by Fanya Kaplan on August 30, the Bolsheviks began a wave of persecution known as the Red Terror.

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