Semen Semenovich Lobov

Born 1888; died Oct. 30, 1937. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1913. Born in the village of Pes’kovo, now Iukhnov Raion, Kaluga Oblast; son of a peasant.

Lobov was a steelworker. He was active in the revolutionary movement from 1910 and a party organizer at the Rozenkrants Plant in St. Petersburg from 1913. He was elected to the Vyborg Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) after the February Revolution of 1917 and to the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP(B) in October 1917. He became a member of the presidium of the Petrograd cheka in 1918 and chairman of the Saratov cheka and a member of the Saratov Provincial Committee of the RCP(B) in May 1919. In May 1920, Lobov became a representative of the All-Russian Cheka for Bashkiria, chairman of the Bashkir Cheka, and people’s commissar of internal affairs of the Bashkir Republic. He returned to Petrograd in 1921 and turned to economic work.

Lobov served in 1924–26 as chairman of the Northwestern Industrial Bureau, a member of the Chief Committee on Concessions, a member of the Northwestern Bureau of the Central Committee of the ACP(B), and a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council on the National Economy (VSNKh) of the USSR. From 1926 he served as chairman of the VSNKh of the RSFSR, head of the Chief Power Engineering Administration of the VSNKh of the RSFSR, and vice-chairman of the VSNKh of the USSR. He became deputy people’s commissar of supplies of the USSR in December 1930. Lobov became people’s commissar of the forestry industry of the USSR in 1932 and people’s commissar of the food industry of the USSR in 1936. He was a delegate to the Eleventh through Seventeenth Party Congresses and was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee at the Eleventh Congress and a member of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) at the Thirteenth through Seventeenth Congresses. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.