Viktor Nogin

(party pseudonym, Makar). Born Feb. 2 (14), 1878, in Moscow; died there May 22, 1924. Soviet statesman and party official. Member of the Communist Party from 1898. Son of a salesclerk.

In 1893, Nogin became a worker at the Glukhovskii Factory in Bogorodsk, now Noginsk. In 1896 he began working at plants in St. Petersburg, where he became a member of the Social Democratic Rabochee Znamia (Workers’ Banner) group. In 1898 he was exiled to Poltava, and in 1900 he emigrated to London. He corresponded with V. I. Lenin and later met him in Munich. He was an Iskra agent in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1901. He was a member of the Ekaterinoslav committee of the RSDLP in 1903. Nogin became a Bolshevik after the Second Congress of the RSDLP. He engaged in party work in Rostov-on-Don, Moscow, and Nikolaev as a member of RSDLP committees. Nogin was a member of the RSDLP committees of St. Petersburg (from late 1905), Baku (1906), and Moscow (1906–08) and chairman of the Moscow Central Bureau of Trade Unions. He was a delegate to the Fifth Party Congress (1907), at which he was elected a member of the Central Committee. Seven times he was exiled to Eastern Siberia and to the North, and he escaped six times. After working in Moscow and Saratov in 1914–15, he was elected a member of the Moscow regional bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP in 1916. In the period of reaction of 1908–10, Nogin displayed a spirit of conciliation toward the Liquidators, and in World War I (1914–18) toward the Menshevik Defensists.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Nogin was one of the organizers and a vice-chairman of the Moscow soviet, becoming its chairman in September. Nogin was a delegate to the Seventh (April) Conference and to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) and was elected a member of the Central Committee at both meetings. He was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at the first convocation. Nogin was a member of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee in the October days of 1917. He was a delegate to the second Congress of Soviets. Nogin served on the first Council of People’s Commissars as people’s commissar of trade and industry. On Nov. 17, 1917, Nogin advocated a coalition government with the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries and left the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) and the Council of People’s Commissars. He later recognized his mistakes.

In 1918, Nogin became deputy people’s commissar of labor and a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council on the National Economy. Nogin was chairman of the All-Russian Union of Cooperative Workers in 1921 and chairman of the board of the All-Russian Textile Syndicate from 1922 to 1924. He was a delegate to the Seventh through Twelfth Party Congresses. Nogin was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) at the Ninth Congress and a member of the Central Auditing Commission at the Tenth Congress. He served as chairman of the Central Auditing Commission of the RCP(B) from 1921 to 1924. He became a member of the International Bureau of the Red International of Trade Unions in 1921. He is buried in Red Square in Moscow.