Miliutin, Nikolai

Born Dec 8, 1889, in St. Peterburg; died 1942. Soviet statesman. Member of the Communist Party from 1908.

The son of a fisherman, Miliutin was a worker. From 1910 he engaged in party work in the trade unions. He was a member of the board of the union of trade and industrial employees in 1913, and from 1914 to 1915, secretary of the hospital mutual aid fund at the Putilov Plant. In 1916 he was drafted into the army, where he continued to carry on revolutionary work. He was a member of the Petrograd Soviet in 1917. In July of that year a regimental tribunal sentenced him to be shot, but he was freed by his company. At the time of the suppression of the Kornilov revolt Miliutin commanded the Red Guard of the Moscow-Narva District and directed the defense of the main sector on the approaches to Petrograd. He participated in the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917. In December. 1917 he returned to trade union work. A member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Labor and of the Smaller Council of People’s Commissars from 1918, Miliutin served in 1920–21 as plenipotentiary extraordinary of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and of the Council of Labor and Defense for Orel and Voronezh provinces and as deputy people’s commissar for food of the Ukrainian SSR. From 1922 to 1924 he was deputy people’s commissar for social security of the RSFSR; from 1924 to 1929, people’s commisar for finance of the RSFSR; in 1929, chairman of the Smaller Council of People’s Commissars; and from 1930 to 1934, deputy people’s commissar for education of the RSFSR. He was head of the RSFSR Central Board for Expanding Cinematic Facilities from 1935 to 1937. Miliutin was a delegate to the Twelfth as well as to the Fourteenth through the Sixteenth Party Congresses.