“Do not extinguish the spirit! Do not lose your nationality, for in it lies our beginning, and without it, an end...” A nation is when people feel like owners of their country, its masters. However, only citizens who possess freedom of opinion and the right to participate in the affairs of the country can realize themselves as masters. If these conditions are absent, then nationality does not exist. Our great empire has been on the brink of destruction more than once, but it was not wealth, which we lacked, nor armaments, in which we always lagged behind, that saved it, but the iron courage of its sons, who spared neither strength nor life for the sake of Russia.

Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov (October 7, 1859, Novorzhev, Russian Empire, September 20, 1918, near Lake Valdai) was an outstanding Russian thinker, conservative publicist, and social activist, as well as one of the ideologists of the Russian national movement. He was one of the leading publicists of the conservative-guarding direction and acted as an ideologist of Russian nationalism. Menshikov was the initiator of the creation of the All-Russian National Union (VNS) in the spring-summer of 1908, gave it its name, and developed its program and charter. Later, the VNS had its faction in the State Duma.

On September 20, 1918, Menshikov was shot on the shores of Lake Valdai in front of his six children. According to his wife, the organizers and judges of the execution were Chekists Yakobson, Davidson, Gilfont, and Commissioner Guba. The monograph “Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov” (2018) states that he was executed without trial or investigation by political criminals. After a volley of rifles, the still-living Menshikov was finished off by the Chekist Davidson, who was in charge of the execution, shooting him twice in the temple with a revolver, stating that he did this with great pleasure.

The grave of M. O. Menshikov is located at the old city cemetery of Valdai (Novgorod region), near the Church of Peter and Paul.