Ivan Flerovskii

Born Jan. 19, 1888, in the village of Katunki, in what is now Chkalovsk Raion, Gorky Ob-last; died Nov. 9, 1959, in Moscow; buried in Kronstadt. Russian revolutionary and journalist. Member of the CPSU from 1905.

The son of a worker, Flerovskii fought in the Revolution of 1905–07. After graduating from a teachers’ seminary in 1907, he taught in Sormovo. From 1907 to 1909 he was chairman of the Sormovo committee and the Nizhny Novgorod district committee of the RSDLP. From 1909 to 1912 he lived in exile in Arkhangelsk Province. In 1913 he began working for democratic journals in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 1915 he was exiled to Irkutsk Province.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Flerovskii became a member of the Kronstadt committee of the RSDLP(B) and the Presidium of the Soviet; he served on the Petrograd soviet and attended the first convocation of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. He was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B). During the October Days of 1917, Flerovskii was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee. He served as a delegate to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets and was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In April 1918 he became chief commissar of the Baltic Fleet, head of a department in the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, and a member of the revolutionary military council of the Caspian Naval Flotilla. Beginning in 1919, he served as a member of the Saratov provincial committee and provincial executive committee, commissar of the administration of water transportation, head of the provincial department of public education, and editor in chief of the newspaper Saratovskie izvestiia. After 1922, Flerovskii worked as editor of several newspapers and journals, and from 1926 to 1929 he was head of a department at TASS. He turned to administrative work and journalism in 1933.

Flerovskii was a delegate to the Ninth Congress of the RCP(B), held in 1920. He became a special pensioner in 1952.