Bolshevik leader of Ivanovo-Voznesensk who built the first soviet alongside Frunze during the 1905 general strike
In May 1905 Balashov turned his apartment into the general-strike headquarters, directing seventy-two days of struggle by seventy thousand weavers; the workers of the Kompaniya factory elected him to Russia's first citywide soviet.
Born into a peasant family, Balashov worked as a weaver from the age of twelve and joined the RSDLP in 1898, becoming a core organizer of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk committee. In 1905, alongside Mikhail Frunze and Fyodor Afanasyev, he led the seventy-two-day general strike that produced Russia's first citywide soviet of workers' deputies; after Afanasyev was murdered by the Black Hundreds, Balashov took over as chairman of the party committee. Arrested in 1908, he spent nine years in Siberian exile until returning in March 1917 to reclaim the chairmanship and serve in the Cheka. Worn down by years of persecution and imprisonment, he took his own life in 1925.
Career Timeline
- 1898Joined the Ivanovo-Voznesensk RSDLP committee
- 1905Led the general strike with Frunze and Afanasyev; elected to the first soviet
- 1905–1908Chairman of Ivanovo-Voznesensk RSDLP; party work in Bryansk and Moscow
- 1908–1917Arrested and exiled to Siberia
- 1917–1918Ivanovo Bolshevik chairman and Cheka; fought in the Civil War
- 1919–1925Party and Soviet posts in Kharkov, Poltava, and Moscow