Mikhail Mikhailovich Lashevich

Born 1884 in Odessa; died Aug. 30, 1928, in Harbin. Soviet government and military figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1901.

Lashevich engaged in party work in Odessa, Nikolaev, Ekaterinburg (present-day Sverdlovsk), and St. Petersburg and was repeatedly subjected to repression. In World War I (1914–18) he was drafted into the army and conducted revolutionary propaganda among the soldiers. At the time of the February Revolution of 1917, Lashevich was secretary and then chairman of the Bolshevik faction in the Petrograd soviet and a member of the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). He was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee during the October days of 1917. He directed the capture of the telegraph and post offices, the state bank, and the Pavel Junker College. He was a member of the Presidium of the Petrograd soviet and of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in all the convocations after the October Revolution. Lashevich was commander of the Third Army and a member of the revolutionary military council of the Eastern and Southern fronts in 1918 and 1919. He was commander of the troops of the Siberian Military District and chairman of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee from 1920 to 1925. In 1925 he was deputy people’s commissar for military and naval affairs, deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR, and a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Economy.

Lashevich was an active member of the “new opposition” and of the Trotskyite-Zinov’evite antiparty bloc in 1925–26. He was expelled from the party by the Fifteenth Congress of the ACP (Bolshevik) in 1927. He recognized his errors after the congress and was reinstated in the ACP(B). From 1926 to 1928 he served as vice-chairman of the board of the Chinese-Eastern Railroad. He was a delegate to the Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth through Fourteenth Party Congresses. He was elected a member of the Central Committee at the Seventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Congresses and a candidate member of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) at the Fourteenth Congress. Lashevich was a delegate to the Third (1921) Congress and a participant in the Fifth (1924) Congress of the Comintern. He was awarded two orders.