Itzhak Perlstein (1873-1928) was a Russian-American socialist activist and Nonpartisan League member.
Biography[]
Itzhak Perlstein was born in Belgorod, Russian Empire in 1873 to a middle-class Jewish family. Perlstein became involved with the Populist movement and the SRs during his youth, resulting in his imprisonment in Nizhnevartovsk in the present-day Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug of Siberia. Perlstein later escaped and became involved with the Menshevik movement within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), and he agitated for revolution during World War I. On the Russian Revolution of 1917, Perlstein was allowed to return to Belgorod, but the persecution of Mensheviks by the Bolsheviks led Perlstein to flee to the United States on a ship out of Odessa. Perlstein traveled to San Francisco, California, and from there to North Dakota, where he intended to become a farmer. While there, he became involved in the Nonpartisan League movement during the 1920s, believing that his Menshevik views were compatible with the NPL's agrarian socialist mindset. Choosing to farm in Medora, whose nearby mountains reminded him of Siberia, Perlstein campaigned for NPL gubernatorial candidates but was discouraged from running for office himself due to conservative allegations against him that he was a "Bolshevik". Perlstein died of tuberculosis in 1928.