Voikov, Petr Lazarevich

(Party pseudonyms, Petrus’ and Intelligent). Born Aug. 1 (13), 1888, in Kerch’; died June 7, 1927, in Warsaw. Active participant in the revolutionary movement in Russia; Soviet diplomat. Born into the family of a foreman at a metallurgical plant. Menshevik from 1903 to 1917.

Voikov was expelled from his Gymnasium and from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute for revolutionary activity. In 1907 he emigrated to Switzerland, where he lived until 1917. Upon his return to Russia, he joined the RSDLP (Bolshevik) in August 1917. Voikov was the secretary of the oblast trade-union bureau and chairman of the city duma in Ekaterinburg in October 1917, and commissar of supplies of the Urals Soviet in 1918. He became vice chairman of the board of the Central Union of Consumers’ Cooperatives in 1919 and a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade as well the following year. In 1921 he was appointed vice-chairman of Severoles (Northern Lumber) State Trust. In October 1924, Voikov was appointed USSR plenipotentiary to Poland. He was killed by a Russian White Guard and buried in Red Square in Moscow.