Semyon Pafnutyevich Sereda

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1871–1933 ○ Natural causes

Bolshevik statistician who, as RSFSR People’s Commissar of Agriculture during the Civil War, drove the creation of state farms

Born in 1871 into an impoverished noble family in Chernigov Governorate, he joined a revolutionary circle, was arrested in 1889 and spent a year in solitary confinement in the Kresty prison. From 1896 he worked in zemstvo statistical offices, and in 1903 he joined the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP. In 1917 he sat on the presidium of the Ryazan Soviet of Workers’ Deputies and was elected to the Constituent Assembly on the Bolshevik list. Appointed RSFSR People’s Commissar of Agriculture in April 1918, he was one of the main initiators of state farms and labour communes. After asking to be relieved for health reasons in December 1920 he sat on the presidium of the Supreme Council of the National Economy, headed the RSFSR Central Statistical Administration in 1927–1930 and was deputy chairman of the RSFSR Council of People’s Commissars in 1930–1933.