First People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs who later built Rostselmash, flagship of Soviet agricultural machinery
In June 1918 at Novorossiysk, as Commissar of the Black Sea Fleet, he ordered the fleet scuttled rather than surrendered to the Germans, instructing sailors: "Moscow will radio orders to sail to Sevastopol for diplomatic reasons — do not count that radio as an order."
Nikolai Glebov-Avilov was a Bolshevik revolutionary from 1904 who ran underground printshops during the 1905 Revolution. After October 1917 he became the first People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs in the inaugural Sovnarkom, then served as VTsSPS secretary and chairman of the Petrograd Trade Union Council, emerging as a central figure in Bolshevik trade union politics. At the Fourteenth Party Congress in 1925 he led the Leningrad Opposition alongside Grigory Zinoviev and was removed; he later became first director of Rostselmash (1929–1936), building the Soviet Union's flagship agricultural machinery plant. Arrested in the Great Purge, he was executed in 1937 and rehabilitated in 1956.
Career Timeline
- 1899–1904Printshop worker in Kaluga, joined Bolsheviks
- 1905–1907Underground revolutionary work in Kaluga, Moscow, Urals
- 1912–1914Party school in Bologna, contributor to Pravda
- 1917.3–10Secretary of Petrograd Central Bureau of Trade Unions, trade union MRC representative
- 1917.11–12First People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs (first Sovnarkom)
- 1918–1921Commissar of Black Sea Fleet, VTsSPS presidium, Ukrainian People's Commissar of Labor
- 1923–1926Chairman of Leningrad Trade Union Council, Opposition leader at XIV Congress
- 1929–1936First director of Rostselmash