Mikhail Vladimirskii

Born Feb. 20 (Mar. 4), 1874, in Arzamas; died Apr. 2, 1951, in Moscow. Soviet Party and government figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1895.

Vladimirskii was born into the family of a priest. In the 1890’s he participated in Marxist circles in Nizhny Novgorod, and then in Moscow, when he was a student in the medical department of Moscow University. He was arrested in 1896 and exiled for his participation in the creation of the Moscow Workers’ Union. From 1898, Vladimirskii worked in the Moscow Social Democratic Organization. In the spring of 1899 he was banished again, and shortly thereafter he went abroad, where he contributed to Iskra. He graduated from the medical department of the University of Berlin, and in 1903 he received a degree from the University of Kazan. He was a zemstvo (district assembly) doctor in Nizhny Novgorod from 1903 to 1905, where he also engaged in illegal Party work. In the fall of 1905 he became a member of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP, and he participated actively in the December armed uprising of 1905 in Moscow.

Vladimirskii emigrated in 1906. He worked in the Paris Bolshevik group and in the Committee of Foreign Organizations. In July 1917 he became a member of the bureau of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). In October 1917 he was a member of the Party military center for the direction of the uprising in Moscow. After the October Revolution, he worked in the Presidium of the Moscow Soviet. He was elected a member of the Central Committee at the seventh congress of the RCP (Bolshevik) in 1918, and between 1919 and 1921 he was a member of the presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and deputy people’s commissar of internal affairs of the RSFSR. Between 1922 and 1925 he was deputy chairman of the Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars) of the Ukrainian SSR, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine, chairman of the Central Control Commission of the CP (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine, and people’s commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1926 and 1927, Vladimirskii was deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR; from 1927 to 1929 he was chairman of the Union of Unions of Agricultural Cooperatives. From 1930 to 1934 he was people’s commissar of public health of the RSFSR. At the 14th congress of the ACP (Bolshevik) in 1925, he was elected a member of the Central Control Commission of the ACP (Bolshevik). He was a delegate to the seventh, tenth, and 12 to 18th congresses of the Party. From 1927 to 1951 he was chairman of the Central Auditing Commission of the ACP (Bolshevik). He wrote works on the problems of Soviet construction and public health. He was a deputy to the third convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin. He was buried in Red Square, near the Kremlin Wall.