A Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian thinker who championed peasant cooperation
“We talk too much; at moments like these, action is necessary.”
Semyon Leontyevich Maslov was a Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian economist and organiser of the peasant cooperative movement. He supported land reform but opposed unsanctioned seizures of estates, seeking to join legal reform with rural self-government. As minister of agriculture in October 1917, he lived through the Provisional Government’s final hours and arrest in the Winter Palace, while continuing to defend the Constituent Assembly and cooperative politics. His later defence of cooperative autonomy conflicted with the direction of Soviet policy, and he was executed in 1938 and rehabilitated in 1988.
Career Timeline
- 1897–1903Exiled to Kazan, then graduated from Kazan University’s law faculty
- 1902–1913Statistician in the Kazan zemstvo, peasant-press editor and Socialist-Revolutionary publicist
- 1913–1917Worked in Moscow agricultural cooperation and helped organise the Central Flax-Growers’ Association
- 1917.04–10Deputy chair of the Main Land Committee and member of the All-Russian Council of Peasant Deputies’ executive committee
- 1917.10.03–25Minister of Agriculture in the Provisional Government
- 1917.10–1918Arrested in the Winter Palace, then joined the underground Provisional Government and Constituent Assembly
- 1921–1929Chair of Selsko-Soyuz, professor and vice-rector of the All-Russian Cooperative Institute
- 1930–1938Exiled and rearrested before being executed in 1938