Baltic Fleet sailor turned commissar who organised the Volga Flotilla, fought at Kazan and was killed on the Kama
Born to a peasant family in Penza Province, he served as a Baltic Fleet sailor, joined the Social Democratic Labour Party in 1916 and in 1917 sat on the Kronstadt Bolshevik committee and Tsentrobalt. After the October Revolution, as secretary and controller of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, he published the old governments' secret diplomatic papers. In June 1918 he built the Volga Flotilla at Nizhny Novgorod and became its commissar; at Sviyazhsk he stopped a regiment that had seized a steamer to desert, bringing it to surrender from an improvised gunboat. In September he led the landing on the Kazan quay that carried off the breech blocks of six White guns, and on 1 October, near Pyany Bor on the Kama, he was killed covering his crew with a machine gun as his gunboat Vanya sank in an ambush.
Activities and affiliations
-
1914–1917
Russian Empire state institutions
Military command -
1916–1918
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
Military command -
1917–1918
Soviet Union state institutions
Diplomacy and international organization -
1918
Soviet Union state institutionsMain
Military command
Career Timeline
- 1910Arrested; eight months in prison
- 1914–1917Baltic Fleet sailor; petty officer in the Kronstadt mine training detachment
- 1916Joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
- 1917Member of the Kronstadt Bolshevik committee, the Kronstadt and Petrograd Soviets and the first Tsentrobalt
- 1917–1918Secretary and controller of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs; published the secret treaties
- 1918Organised the Volga Flotilla; its commissar
- 1918Led the landing party at the Kazan quay
- 1918Killed at Pyany Bor on the Kama