Shmidt, Vasilii

Born Dec. 29, 1886, in St. Petersburg; died Aug. 21,1940. Soviet party and state figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1905.

The son of a worker, Shmidt was a metalworker by trade. After taking part in the Revolution of 1905–07, he emigrated to Germany in 1907 and returned to St. Petersburg in 1911. Between 1912 and 1914 he was secretary of the Union of Metalworkers of Vyborg District, secretary of the St. Petersburg Union of Metalworkers, and a member of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP. He did party work in Ekaterinoslav. Shmidt served as the secretary of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP in 1915 and 1916 and was arrested several times.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Shmidt was the secretary of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP(B) and of the Petrograd Council of Trade Unions. He was a delegate to the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference and the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B). He became a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions and people’s commissar of labor in 1918 and held both positions until 1928.

Shmidt served as deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR and of the Council of Labor and Defense from 1928 to 1930. For a brief period he supported the right-wing deviation in the ACP(B). He served as deputy people’s commissar of agriculture of the USSR and chief arbitrator of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR from 1930 to 1932. In 1933, Shmidt took an administrative position in the Far East.

Shmidt was a delegate to the Seventh through Sixteenth Party Congresses. He was elected a member of the Central Committee at the Seventh, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Congresses and a candidate member at the Eighth, Tenth, Eleventh, Thirteenth, and Sixteenth Congresses. He was a candidate member of the Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee in 1921 and 1922 and from 1926 to 1930. Shmidt also served as a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.