Pyotr Alexandrovich Smirnov

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1897–1939 ✕ Executed

First People's Commissar of the Navy, who drove the Red Army purge and was then shot himself

Born in 1897 in Vyatka Governorate, he worked as a joiner; jailed in 1916 for revolutionary activity, he was freed by the February Revolution. He joined the Bolsheviks in March 1917, fought in the Civil War as a regimental and divisional commissar, and took part in suppressing the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. After heading political directorates of the Baltic naval forces and several military districts, he succeeded Gamarnik as head of the Red Army Political Directorate in June 1937 and became Deputy People's Commissar of Defence in September. On 30 December 1937 he was appointed the first People's Commissar of the newly created Navy commissariat, and he was one of the main organisers of the 1937 Red Army purge. Arrested on 30 June 1938, he was shot in February 1939 on charges of a 'military-fascist conspiracy' and rehabilitated in 1956.