Markin, Nikolai

Born May 9 (21), 1893, in the settlement of Syromias, now Markino, Sosnovoborsk Raion, Penza Oblast; died Oct. 1, 1918, near the settlement of P’ianyi Bor, now Krasnyi Bor, Menzelinsk Raion, Tatar ASSR. Active participant in the Civil War of 1918-20. Member of the Communist Party from 1916. Son of a peasant.

Markin joined the Baltic Fleet in 1914. He participated in the February Revolution of 1917. In 1917 he was a member of the Petrograd soviet, a delegate to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, a member of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Navy (Tsentroflot), and a participant in the October armed uprising in Petrograd. In early November 1917 he was appointed secretary and then inspector of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs; Markin fought against sabotage by clerks and set up the operating machinery for the commissariat. Upon the instruction of the Party Central Committee and V. I. Lenin, he organized the publication of the Collection of Secret Documents From the Archives of the Former Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In 1918, Markin was commissar in charge of forming the Volga Naval Flotilla in Nizhny Novgorod. He was appointed deputy commander of the flotilla in late August 1918 and directed a landing operation near Kazan in September. He died in combat on the Kama River.