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
- 1917.3Secretary, 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