Sladkov, Ivan Davydovich

Born Mar. 11 (23), 1890, in the village of Molodenok, in what is now Tula Oblast; died June 5, 1922, in Sevastopol’. Soviet naval figure; participant in the October Revolution of 1917. Member of the Communist Party from 1911.

Sladkov joined the navy in 1910 and served as a noncommissioned officer. A secretary of an underground cell of the RSDLP aboard the battleship Alexander II, he helped create Bolshevik organizations in the Baltic fleet and was one of the leaders of the Chief Marine Collective of the RSDLP. After the uprising aboard the battleship Gangut in December 1915, Sladkov was arrested and sentenced to seven years at hard labor; he was freed during the February Revolution of 1917.

Sladkov was elected a member of the Petrograd soviet, the Kronstadt soviet, and the Kronstadt committee of the RSDLP(B); he was a delegate from Kronstadt to the Tsentroflot (Central Committee of the All-Russian Navy). During the October armed uprising he directed the capture of the Petrograd military port; he later became port commissar. In November 1917, Sladkov was a delegate to the first All-Russian Congress of Naval Sailors. In June 1919 he became commissar of the Krasnaia Gorka and Seraia Loshad’ forts. In 1920 he was made commandant of several fortified areas. On Apr. 1, 1921, Sladkov became commissar of the naval forces of the RSFSR. [23–1647–]