1883–1907
✕ Suspicious death in prison
The young furniture-factory heir whose plant became the heart of the Presnya uprising
Arrested and taken to the Semyonovsky regiment camp, Shmit was stood against a wall and threatened with execution on the spot; broken by days of sleep deprivation and interrogation, he finally confessed.
Heir to a Moscow furniture factory who threw himself into the 1905 Revolution, turning his plant into an arsenal, hospital, and morgue for workers' fighting squads and providing the material base for the Presnya armed uprising. He introduced a nine-hour workday and wage increases, and gave 20,000 rubles to the RSDLP for arming the workers. Arrested after the December uprising was crushed, he was tortured and died under suspicious circumstances in Butyrka prison; his inheritance of about 280,000 rubles became a critical financial foundation for the Bolsheviks.
Activities and affiliations
- 1904–1905 Industry and production
Career Timeline
- 1902Father's death; inherited the furniture factory
- 1904Came of age, assumed full control of the factory
- 1905Introduced 9-hour workday and wage rises; gave 20,000 rubles to RSDLP; turned factory into a revolutionary stronghold
- 1905.12Presnya uprising: factory served as arsenal, hospital and morgue, destroyed by Semyonovsky regiment artillery
- 1905.12.18Arrested, tortured and threatened with execution
- 1907.02.13Died under suspicious circumstances in Butyrka prison
Related historical events
The Furniture Factory as a Presnya Fortress (1905)
By the autumn of 1905 the Shmit furniture factory in Presnya was no longer merely a place of production. Shmit took on the professional revolutionaries Ivan Karasyov and Mikhail Nikolayev under the guise of hiring workers, and while preparing the December armed uprising he bought large quantities of Brownings and Mausers that neither the police nor the army then possessed, arming his own fighting squad and others as well. He trained in marksmanship and street-fighting tactics together with his future squad members.
The plant itself became an arsenal: bombs were made on the premises and leaflets printed. The Moscow University observatory next door prepared maps of Moscow marking the sites suitable for barricades, and students of the Imperial Moscow Technical School advised on barricade construction. As a result, no assault by government troops on Presnya succeeded until it was shelled with cannon, and the firepower of Shmit's squad was said to be such that no armed unit in Moscow could withstand its advance.
The uprising, however, had lost unified leadership. That leadership had already been arrested on 7 December, and the insurgents consequently failed to halt howitzer artillery and troops loyal to the emperor from reaching Moscow along the Nikolayev railway. It was that artillery that fired on Presnya and on Shmit's factory, destroying the plant. Shmit also passed large sums for arming workers to the Moscow Bolshevik organization through Maxim Gorky. His fighters held the barricades longer than the others, but on 18 December, after a search that turned up nothing, he was arrested.