Iskra agent across three revolutions, KOMZET chairman who shaped Soviet nationality policy and the Birobidzhan Jewish experiment
On December 30, 1922, he declared open the First All-Union Congress of Soviets — the moment that formalized the birth of the USSR.
An Old Bolshevik who joined the RSDLP in 1898. Born into Polish nobility, he was expelled from Moscow University, studied electrical engineering in Paris, and worked in Belgian factories as a member of the Belgian Workers' Party. An Iskra agent through all three Russian revolutions, he served on the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee during October 1917 and chaired the Moscow Soviet. As KOMZET chairman he advanced the Birobidzhan Jewish Autonomous Oblast experiment, and as chairman of the Committee of the North he designed administrative and economic policy for northern indigenous peoples. His ashes are interred in the Kremlin Wall.
Career Timeline
- 1898Joined RSDLP; revolutionary work in St. Petersburg
- 1902–1905Iskra agent, co-organized underground Iskra press in Uman; all three revolutions
- 1917–1918Moscow VRK member, VTsIK Presidium, Chairman of Mossovet
- 1921Participated in suppression of Antonov and Kronstadt uprisings
- 1924–1935Chairman of KOMZET: planned and advanced the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (Birobidzhan)
- 1924–1935Chairman of the Committee of the North: administrative and economic foundations for northern peoples
- 1933–1935Chairman of the Committee on Nature Reserves under VTsIK
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905Moscow Bolshevik organizerAn Old Bolshevik who joined the party in 1898, he participated in workers' agitation and strike organizing in Moscow during 1905 and remained an underground activist through all three revolutions.
- 1917.10–1918.01The October Revolutionmember of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee
The Committee of the North and Indigenous Peoples
On June 20, 1924, the Committee for Assistance to the Peoples of the Northern Borderlands (Komitet Severa) was established under the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK). Smidovich chaired it from its founding until his death in 1935, eleven years. Its mandate was "assistance in the planned organization of the small peoples of the North in economic, administrative, judicial, and cultural-sanitary respects." The committee brought together prominent figures including Anatoly Lunacharsky, Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, Nikolai Semashko, Avel Yenukidze, and ethnographers Vladimir Bogoraz and Lev Shternberg. Seven sub-commissions were formed: administrative-legal, cooperative-handicraft, scientific research, finance and tax, transport, health, and education.
Under Smidovich's leadership, by 1935 nine national okrugs, 93 districts, 830 nomadic soviets, and over 500 production associations had been organized; 338 schools were built, with 70 percent of school-age children receiving education; and ten newspapers were published in indigenous languages. He was personally active in creating the Nenets National Okrug (now the Nenets Autonomous Okrug). After his death the committee was dissolved in August 1935 and absorbed into the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (Glavsevmorput), but his work establishing modern administrative and economic foundations for the indigenous peoples of the Soviet North is regarded as a distinctive experiment in Soviet nationality policy. The Institute of the Peoples of the North was named after him.