William Dudley "Big Bill" Haywood (1869 - 1928) was a founder and leader of the IWW and was involved in several worker uprisings in the USA.
Life
Life in Moscow
In the USSR, Haywood became a labor advisor to Lenin's government, and served in that position until 1923. Haywood also participated in the founding of the Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Colony. Various visitors to Haywood's small Moscow apartment in later years recalled that he felt lonely and depressed, and expressed a desire to return to the United States. In 1926 he took a Russian wife, though the two had to communicate in sign language, as neither spoke the other's language.[1]
Death
On May 18, 1928, Haywood died in a Moscow hospital from a stroke brought on by alcoholism and diabetes. Half of his ashes were buried in the Kremlin wall; an urn containing the other half of his ashes was sent to Chicago and buried near the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument.[2]