First Commissar for Food, purged for his NEP-era agrarian Marxism
In 1917, should we have begun with War Communism, or with what in 1921 would be called NEP? I held to the latter view even then.
A Bolshevik who joined the social-democratic movement in 1895, he became the first People's Commissar for Food Supply after the October Revolution. He laid the institutional foundations of early Soviet food policy and, in the 1920s, emerged as a leading agrarian-Marxist theorist who conceptualized NEP as a path to socialism through the development of 'strong' peasant farms. As Deputy People's Commissar for Agriculture and director of the International Agrarian Institute, he protected the economist N.D. Kondratiev, until the campaign to crush 'Kondratievism' drove him from every post. Arrested in 1937, he was shot during the Great Purge.
Career Timeline
- 1895Joined Moscow 'Workers' Union,' organized Smolensk's first SD circle
- 1902Moscow Committee of RSDLP; arrested, exiled to Yakutia for 6 years
- 1905Secretary of Proletary editorial board in Geneva; Petersburg Committee member
- 1907Elected to RSDLP Central Committee at the 5th Congress as a Bolshevik
- 1917First People's Commissar for Food Supply (Oct–Dec); resigned over failed coalition
- 1922–1928Deputy People's Commissar for Agriculture
- 1926–1930Director of the International Agrarian Institute; General Secretary of the Peasant International
- 1929–1935Editor of Katorga i ssylka, head of Society of Former Political Prisoners publishing
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905Member of the Petersburg CommitteeElected to the Bolshevik Petersburg Committee in October 1905, he helped direct the general strike and soviet organizing and contributed to the central party daily Novaya Zhizn.
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionFirst Commissar of Food SupplyAppointed the first People's Commissar for Food Supply in Sovnarkom on 26 October (9 November) 1917. He signed the resignation statement from the Central Committee and Sovnarkom on 4 (17) November demanding an all-socialist coalition government, but continued to perform his duties until December.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionPartisan detachment member
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)NEP agrarian Marxist who contributed to agricultural economic policy formulation
- 1937–1938The Great Purgearrested and executed in 1937-1938
November 1917: Resignation for a Coalition Government
Immediately after the October Revolution, Teodorovich became People's Commissar for Food Supply in the first Council of People's Commissars. But within ten days, he resigned alongside eight other Bolshevik commissars, in protest against Lenin's refusal to form a broad 'all-Soviet' coalition government including Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
On 4 November 1917 (O.S.), Teodorovich joined Nogin, Rykov, Milyutin, Shliapnikov and others in a statement to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee warning that "a purely Bolshevik government can maintain itself only by means of political terror" and would "lead to the ruin of the revolution and the country." Lenin was furious; the Central Committee denounced the resigners as 'deserters,' yet within days the party quietly reversed course and formed a coalition with the Left SRs.
Teodorovich continued his duties through December, but he was already a marginalized figure in the first cabinet. The resignation became a political stigma that was revived whenever he later found himself in the minority, during the NEP-era agrarian debates and, decisively, in 1930 when Stalin, in a letter to Molotov, called him a 'scoundrel' and identified him as a link between Kondratiev and the Right Opposition of Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky. That brief act of defiance in November 1917 cast a shadow over his entire career.