Deputy Red Army commander who fell as a United Oppositionist
On the night of 24 October 1917, from the Peter and Paul Fortress, Lashevich ordered the cruiser Aurora to restore the Nikolaevsky Bridge that junkers had drawn apart the day before — reopening the insurrection's severed artery.
A Bolshevik military leader born in Odessa. Conscripted into the First World War and twice wounded, he went on to direct the October rising from the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee in 1917. During the Civil War he commanded the 3rd Army and served on the Revolutionary Military Councils of the Eastern and Southern Fronts, rising to First Deputy Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the USSR Revolutionary Military Council in 1925. In 1926 he joined Zinoviev's United Opposition, organizing an illegal opposition gathering in a forest near Moscow; he was stripped of his candidate Central Committee seat and deputy command, expelled from the party in 1927, and died in Harbin the following year.
Career Timeline
- 1901–15Joined RSDLP; party work in Odessa, Nikolaev, Ekaterinoslav, Petersburg; repeated arrests and exile
- 1915–17Conscripted WWI; twice wounded; rose to senior NCO for merit
- 1917Secretary and chairman of Bolshevik faction in Petrograd Soviet; MRC member; directed October rising
- 1918–20Commander 3rd Army; RVS member Eastern, Southern & Western Fronts; acting commander 7th Army
- 1922–25Chairman Siberian Revolutionary Committee; commander Siberian Military District
- 1925–26Deputy Chairman USSR RMC; First Deputy Commissar for Military & Naval Affairs
- 1926–27Joined United Opposition; organized illegal gathering; removed as candidate CC member; expelled at 15th Party Congress
- 1928Recanted opposition; party membership restored; died in Harbin
Related historical events
- 1917.02–07The February RevolutionChairman of the Bolshevik faction in the Petrograd Soviet
- 1917.10–1918.01The October Revolutionmember of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and uprising commander
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCommander of the 3rd Army and member of front Revolutionary Military Councils
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)military leader of the United Opposition who opposed NEP policies
The Forest Meeting of 1926 — Watershed of the United Opposition
On 6 June 1926, Lashevich organized and delivered the keynote report at a clandestine gathering of United Opposition supporters in a forest near the Dolgoprudnaya station outside Moscow. Since the 10th Party Congress had banned factions in 1921, an opposition group holding its own meeting outside party apparatus control was an exceptional challenge. Lashevich criticized the Central Committee leadership's line, and participants discussed the bureaucratization of the party and the social polarization unfolding under NEP.
The Stalin faction seized on the gathering as definitive proof of 'anti-party factional activity.' At the July 1926 Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission, Point 7 of the resolution 'On Party Unity', the provision allowing expulsion of Central Committee members for factionalism, was invoked for the first time. Lashevich was stripped of his candidate CC membership, removed as Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, and barred from responsible party work for two years. Zinoviev was expelled from the Politburo. The episode became the signal for an all-out campaign against the United Opposition, opening a year and a half of public denunciation and administrative purge.