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.
Activities and affiliations
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
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905underground printing house revolutionary activity
- 1917.12–1918.11Brest-Litovsk and Germany’s eastern occupationBlack Sea Fleet scuttling commissionerIn June 1918 at Novorossiysk, he urged the fleet to scuttle rather than surrender to Germany.
- 1923–1927The Succession Struggle and the Left OppositionLeningrad Opposition leaderAt the 1925 Fourteenth Party Congress, he led the Leningrad Opposition alongside Zinoviev.
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationFounding director who built RostselmashFrom 1929 to 1936, he built Rostselmash as its first director.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeLeningrad opposition targetThe first commissar of posts and telegraphs was targeted for his Leningrad opposition ties and executed in 1937.
People's Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs and the Black Sea Fleet, 1918
Glebov-Avilov became the first People's Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs in the first Sovnarkom after the October Revolution, but he held the post for less than four months. On 19 December 1917, when the Bolsheviks formed a short-lived coalition with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, he was replaced, after which he served as assistant director of the State Bank. Elected to the Constituent Assembly for the Kaluga electoral district, he sat with the Bolshevik deputies, and in the first half of 1918 he worked as a party functionary in the south.
In May 1918 he was appointed commissar of the Black Sea Fleet. Soviet Russia, having left the imperialist war, was required by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to hand the fleet to Germany, and the Sovnarkom resolved that it be scuttled. Glebov-Avilov was given this task not at Odessa, by then occupied by German troops, but with the fleet gathered at Novorossiysk.
When the fleet's assembly of delegates met at Novorossiysk in June 1918, it took note of the German ultimatum and put the question of scuttling to a secret ballot of the ships' crews. This exposed the problem of whether the Brest-Litovsk clause, which presupposed a single naval base and a concentrated command, could be carried out by a fleet dispersed at Novorossiysk. Days later the delegates resolved that they wanted to go to Sevastopol, preserve the fleet and fight, agreeing to scuttle only if defence proved clearly impossible. Glebov-Avilov tried to reverse this. That he told the sailors the central government would send, for diplomatic reasons, a radio order to proceed to Sevastopol and that they should not treat that radio message as an order was a version widely reported at the time in 1918. He maintained that he acted to save the more than 3,000 sailors confined in Novorossiysk, and that he had to exceed the assembly's instruction under conditions in which contact with their families was difficult.
The fleet was scuttled in June 1918. Soviet accounts record the episode as the scuttling of the Black Sea Fleet and describe him as having pressed the Sovnarkom's order to scuttle against the resistance of the sailors. The decision succeeded in denying the ships to Germany, but remained a contested episode for the damage it did to the Soviet position in the south.