Smirnov, Ivan Fedorovich

(party pseudonym N. Lastochkin). Born Jan. 3 (15), 1885, in Moscow: died April 1919, in Odessa. Participant in the struggle for Soviet power in the Ukraine. Member of the Communist Party from 1906.

Smirnov, a tailor by trade, engaged in party work in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, Samara (present-day Kuibyshev), and Tsari-tsyn (present-day Volgograd). Beginning in 1912 he directed illegal trade union organizations in the Ukraine–in Kiev, Kharkov, and Odessa. He was often arrested and in 1914 was exiled to Siberia. After the February Revolution of 1917, Smirnov worked in Kiev. In August of that year he became chairman of the city’s Central Council of Factory Trade Union Committees and was later made a member of the Executive Committee of the Kiev soviet.

Beginning in 1918, Smirnov engaged in illegal party work in Odessa. He was chairman of the underground oblast committee of the CP(B) of the Ukraine and helped direct the work of the Foreign Board, which carried out revolutionary agitation among the interventionist forces. He also served as chairman of the Odessa revolutionary committee. In 1919 he was a member of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee. Smirnov was arrested in March 1919 by White Guards and executed.