Smidovich, Sofia Nikolaevna

Born Mar. 8 (20), 1872, in Tula; died Nov. 26, 1934, in Moscow. Soviet party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1898.

Smidovich was the daughter of a member of the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry). She carried on party work in Tula, Moscow, Kiev, and Kaluga and in 1914 began working with the Moscow Oblast bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. After the February Revolution of 1917, she was secretary of the Moscow Oblast bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) and a member of the Commission for Work Among Women. During the October Revolution of 1917, she headed the information section and was secretary of the presidium of the Moscow soviet.

In 1918 and 1919, Smidovich was a member of the collegium of the Moscow Department of Public Education, and in the years 1919–22, head of the women’s division of the Moscow oblast committee of the RCP(B). From 1922 to 1924 she headed the division of working and peasant women of the Central Committee of the RCP(B). From 1925 to 1930, Smidovich worked on the staff of the Central Control Commission of the ACP(B) and was a member of the Party Collegium of the Central Control Commission. In 1931 and 1932 she was first deputy chairman of the Committee to Improve the Living and Working Conditions of Women, a committee of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, and then worked for the Society of Old Bolsheviks.

Smidovich was a delegate to the Eleventh through Sixteenth Congresses of the ACP(B); at the Thirteenth through Fifteenth Congresses she was elected a member of the Central Control Commission. Smidovich was awarded the Order of Lenin. [23–1813–]