The Baltic Fleet political commissar whose 'explosion' warning foreshadowed the Kronstadt revolt
Sent to persuade the mutinous Kronstadt sailors, he was arrested and imprisoned instead.
A Bolshevik since 1903, he was a military political commissar who served on the revolutionary military councils of several fronts during the Civil War before heading the Baltic Fleet's political department in 1921. At an enlarged session of the Petrograd Soviet on 26 February 1921 he warned that rebellious moods were spreading among the sailors and that an 'explosion' would erupt unless the Petrograd strikes were stopped. During the Kronstadt rebellion he was sent to persuade the mutineers and was arrested; in the 1937 terror he refused to confess and was shot the following year.
Career Timeline
- 1903Joined the RSDLP as a Bolshevik
- 1917Chairman of the Gatchina Soviet; Bolshevik military organisation
- 1918–1919Commissar, South-Western Front; Revolutionary Military Council, Northern theatre
- 1920Baltic Fleet RVS member; commander, 12th Army
- 1921Head of the Baltic Fleet political department; helped suppress Kronstadt
- 1924Assistant military prosecutor, USSR Supreme Court
- 1925–1932Political headships, Central Asian and Siberian military districts
- 1932Left the army to head Sevmorput's Omsk branch