The Left SR figurehead chairman of the MRC, lending a non-Bolshevik face to the Bolshevik insurrection while Trotsky directed operations
On the night of 21 October 1917 Lazimir, as MRC chairman, went with Sadovsky and Mekhonoshin to military district headquarters to claim supreme authority over the garrison; Colonel Polkovnikov refused, saying he did not recognise their commissars and would arrest them if they broke the law.
A feldsher at the Petrograd military hospital who turned to SR agitation among soldiers, Pavel Lazimir rose after the February Revolution to chair the soldiers' section of the Petrograd Soviet. In October 1917 the Bolsheviks installed him, a Left SR, as chairman of the newly created Military Revolutionary Committee to give the body a non-Bolshevik front; the real direction came from Trotsky, while Lazimir himself drafted the MRC's founding statute. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1918 and served on the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front, organizing supply and sanitation, before dying of typhus in 1920 at twenty-nine.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- ~1911–1917Feldsher at Petrograd military hospital; SR agitation among soldiers
- 1917.3–10Executive Committee member, Petrograd Soviet; chair of soldiers' section; deputy chair of military department
- 1917.10First chairman of Petrograd MRC; drafted the MRC statute
- 1917.11–1918Collegium member, NKVD and Narkomvoen
- 1918–1920Member, RVS Southern Front; directed supply and sanitation
Related historical events
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionNominal chairman of the Military Revolutionary CommitteeA Left SR, he formally chaired the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, giving the Bolshevik-led insurrection a non-Bolshevik front.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionSouthern Front supply and sanitation officialAs a member of the Southern Front Revolutionary Military Council, he organized supply and sanitation.
The Petrograd Soviet and the Military Revolutionary Committee
After the February Revolution, Lazimir served on the Petrograd Soviet's Executive Committee, chairing its soldiers' section and serving as deputy chair of its military department. During preparations for the October armed uprising in 1917, he supported establishing a Military Revolutionary Committee within the Soviet and drafted its proposed regulation, the “Regulation on the Military Revolutionary Committee.” A Left Socialist Revolutionary, he became a member of the committee bureau and its first chairman, placing him among the Soviet's central figures in preparing and carrying out the uprising. In November he served on the collegia of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs and the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs. The sources document his posts and committee work, but do not establish that he was the committee's sole effective commander.