Secretary of the Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee and the lawyer who drafted Order No. 1
Sokolov sat at the desk writing. Soldiers crowded around him, standing and leaning over the table, half dictating, half suggesting what he should write. ... When the work was done, they put the heading 'Order No. 1' on the sheet. Sukhanov, Notes on the Revolution
Born the son of a court archpriest, he turned to defending revolutionaries and became the lawyer for every radical cause in late imperial Russia. On March 1, 1917, as secretary of the Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee, he chaired the soldiers' section meeting that drafted Order No. 1, the document that democratized the Russian army and signaled the Soviet's de facto supremacy over the Provisional Government. Never a party member, he was among the busiest unofficial leaders of the revolution's first months, then worked quietly as a Soviet legal adviser after the Civil War and died in Yalta.
Career timeline
1885–1896Published articles on law and political economy in Mir Bozhy, Obrazovanie, Zhizn and other journals
1894–1898Investigated for Narodnaya Volya ties; arrested for involvement in the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class (1896); exiled to Revel (1898)
1905–1909Defence counsel in major political trials: Khrustalev-Nosar, RSDLP military organisation, and others
1909–1910Legal adviser to the Social Democratic faction, Third State Duma
1910–1916Member, Supreme Council of the Grand Orient of the Peoples of Russia; member of Galpern and Gegechkori lodges
1914Sentenced to 8 months in the 'Case of 25 Lawyers' (Beilis protest); commuted to suspension of practice
1917.03Secretary, Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee; drafted and edited Order No. 1
1917Member of the Pre-Parliament and the Extraordinary Investigative Commission; appointed senator by Kerensky
1917–1928Legal adviser to the Soviet government; served in various Soviet institutions
From Rosa Luxemburg's lawyer to KPD leader, his 'anti-putschism' took on Comintern adventurism
Right after the March Action of 1921 he wrote: 'When I conceived this pamphlet, the Communist Party had 500,000 members in Germany. Eight days later when I wrote it, the party was shaken to its foundations and its very existence called into question. The fallen, sacrificed to this Bakuninist madness, cry out: Never again!'
A socialist who rose from Rosa Luxemburg's lawyer to chairman of the German Communist Party (KPD). Expelled for his pamphlet Unser Weg, which condemned the 1921 March Action as 'Bakuninist putschism,' he returned via the USPD to lead the SPD left. Trotsky called him 'the only man in Germany who had a head to lose.'
Career timeline
1906Joined the SPD; began law practice in Frankfurt
1913Defended Rosa Luxemburg in court on charges of inciting soldiers to disobedience
1915–1918Co-founded the Spartacus League; Zimmerwald Left bureau; edited Spartakusbriefe
1918.12Introduced the 'National Assembly' debate at the KPD founding congress
1919.03–1921.02KPD chairman — rebuilt the party after the murders of Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and Jogiches
1920Led unification with the USPD left, turning the KPD into a mass party; championed the 'Open Letter' tactic
1921Expelled from the KPD for Unser Weg: Wider den Putschismus, his critique of the March Action
1922Returned to the SPD via the USPD; published Luxemburg's suppressed manuscript The Russian Revolution
1924–1930SPD Reichstag deputy; fought to expose the Liebknecht–Luxemburg murders and opposed the rising Nazi movement
A socialist constitutional scholar who sought to ground sovereignty in the people
At the 1944 Lebanon Conference, he sought to carry the Resistance's representation from liberated Greece into a national government.
Alexandros Svolos was a Greek constitutional scholar and socialist politician whose work connected labour rights to democratic constitutional order. During the Axis occupation, he chaired the Political Committee of National Liberation, helping lead administration in liberated areas and articulate institutions grounded in popular representation, while seeking cooperation between the Resistance and the government in exile at the Lebanon Conference. After liberation he became finance minister in the government of national unity, but resigned with the EAM ministers rather than endorse the dissolution of the resistance army. He pursued an independent socialist democracy between the established right and the communist movement, a position that gave his politics both influence and isolation in postwar Greece.
Career timeline
1915Earned a doctorate in constitutional law at the University of Athens and began teaching
1917–1920Director of Labour and Social Policy at the Ministry of National Economy
1929–1946Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Athens
1941–1943President of the Committee of Macedonians and Thracians
1944.04–09President of the Political Committee of National Liberation, also secretary for foreign affairs, education, religion and popular enlightenment
1944.09–12Minister of Finance in the government of national unity
1945–1953President of the Socialist Party–Union of Popular Democracy
