Bolshevik industrial administrator who rose from the Cheka to chair VSNKh RSFSR
In 1936 Lobov received the Order of Lenin for his commissariat's overfulfillment of the production plan. One year later the same party arrested him for 'anti-Soviet terrorist' activity; he was sentenced and shot on the same day, 30 October 1937.
Son of a forester in Smolensk, he worked as a labourer and draftsman before joining the Bolsheviks in 1913. During the Civil War he chaired the Petrograd, Saratov and Bashkir Chekas, becoming an early cadre of the Soviet security organs. Under NEP he managed the fuel and oil syndicate, then became chairman of VSNKh RSFSR in 1926, laying the administrative basis for industrialization. As People's Commissar for Timber Industry from 1932, he oversaw lumber supply for the Five-Year Plans and received the Order of Lenin in 1936. Arrested in June 1937, he was shot on 30 October 1937 and rehabilitated in 1956.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1913Joins Bolsheviks; worker at Rosenkrantz plant, Petrograd
- 1917–1918Petrograd and Vyborg party committees; factory chairman; Soviet deputy
- 1918–1919Deputy chairman, Petrograd Cheka
- 1919–1920Saratov Cheka chairman → Bashkir Cheka chairman and NKVD commissar
- 1921–1923Head of fuel department, USSR Oil Syndicate
- 1923–1926Chairman of NW Industrial Bureau; VSNKh Presidium member
- 1926–1930Chairman of VSNKh RSFSR and head of Glavenergo
- 1930–1932Deputy People's Commissar of Supply, USSR
- 1932–1936People's Commissar for Timber Industry, USSR
- 1936–1937People's Commissar for Food Industry, RSFSR
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCheka deputy chairman
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationTimber commissar responsible for lumber supplyFrom 1932, as timber commissar, he oversaw lumber supply for the Five-Year Plans.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeIndustrial official targetedThe forestry commissar was arrested the year after receiving the Order of Lenin and shot in 1937.
Party leadership posts
Lobov did not work only as an industrial administrator; he also held elected posts in the party leadership. He was a candidate member of the party Central Committee in 1922-1923 and a full member from 1924 to 1937. He served as a candidate member of the Central Committee's Orgburo from 16 April 1927 and as a full Orgburo member from 13 July 1930 to 26 January 1934. He was also elected to the USSR Central Executive Committee for its first through seventh convocations and attended the party congresses from the eleventh to the seventeenth as a delegate.
These elected posts were stripped from him in 1937, all at once. At the June 1937 Central Committee plenum he was expelled from the Central Committee and from the party. On 21 June, the same month, he was arrested on the basis of testimony by I. M. Vareikis, former first secretary of the Far Eastern regional committee, and on 29 October he was sentenced to death for participation in an anti-Soviet counterrevolutionary terrorist organization and executed. On 14 March 1956 the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court rehabilitated him, and on 22 March the Party Control Committee of the Central Committee restored his party membership. Sources differ on his birthplace: some record the village of Peskovo in Smolensk province, others the village of Peskovo in the Yukhnov district of Kaluga province, so this is left undetermined.