Ivan Adolfovich Teodorovich

Born Aug. 29 (Sept. 10), 1875, in Smolensk; died Sept. 20, 1937. Soviet party and state figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1895.

Born into the gentry, Teodorovich graduated from the faculty of natural history of Moscow University, where he was involved in the student movement. From 1895 he was a member of the Moscow Workers’ Union. In 1902 he became a member of the Moscow committee of the RSDLP. In 1905 he was secretary in the editorial office of the newspaper Proletarii in Geneva. From October 1905 to 1907 he was a member of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP. Teodorovich was a delegate to the Fourth and Fifth Congresses of the RSDLP in 1906 and 1907, respectively, and was elected a member of the Central Committee at the Fifth Congress. In 1908 he conducted party work in the Urals. He was arrested repeatedly and was sentenced to penal servitude and to exile.

In Petrograd after the February Revolution of 1917, Teodorovich was a delegate to the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP(B), at which he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee, and to the Sixth Congress. He was deputy chairman of the Petrograd city council from August 1917.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Teodorovich was the first member of the Council of People’s Commissars, serving as people’s commissar for foodstuffs. On November 4 (17), 1917, he resigned from the Council of People’s Commissars, adopting an erroneous position in support of the so-called unified socialist government with the participation of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries; however, he continued to fulfill his duties until December 1917. In 1919 and 1920, Teodorovich participated in the partisan movement in Siberia against the Kolchak regime.

From 1920 to 1928, Teodorovich was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR and served as a deputy people’s commissar. At the same time, he was director of the International Agrarian Institute from 1926. From 1928 to 1930 he was general secretary of the Peasant International. From 1929 to 1935 he was editor of the publishing house of the Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiles, as well as editor of the journal Katorga i ssylka (Penal Servitude and Exile),

Teodorovich wrote a number of works dealing with the agrarian question and the history of the revolutionary movement, including The Fates of the Russian Peasantry (1923), The Historical Significance of the People’s Will Party (1930), and March 1, 1881 (1931). He was a delegate to the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Congresses of the ACP(B) and was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.