Shotman, Aleksandr

Shotman, Aleksandr Vasil’evich

 

Born Aug. 25 (Sept. 6), 1880, in the village of Aleksandrovskoe, now within the Leningrad city limits; died Oct. 30, 1937. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1899.

The son of a worker, Shotman was a lathe operator. During the period from 1899 to 1902 he was a member of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, a participant in the Obukhov defense of 1901, and a member of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP. Shotman was a delegate to the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903. During the Revolution of 1905–07 he was a member first of the St. Petersburg committee of the party and then of the Odessa committee. In 1911 and 1912 he was a member of the Helsingfors committee of the Social Democratic Party of Finland; in 1913 he took part in the Poronin meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP with party officials. Shotman was co-opted into membership in the Central Committee and the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. He was arrested in November 1913 and exiled to Siberia.

In 1917, Shotman became a member of the Tomsk committee of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) and a member of the executive committee of the local soviet; in June 1917 he became a member of the Petrograd district committee of the party. He was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B). Shotman maintained communication between the party’s Central Committee and V. I. Lenin, who was in Razliv, and organized Lenin’s move to Finland. After October 1917, Shotman served as deputy people’s commissar for postal and telegraph services.

From 1918 to 1920, Shotman was a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council on the National Economy and chairman of the Siberian Council on the National Economy. In 1923 and 1924 he was chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Karelian ASSR. In 1926, Shotman became a member of the Supreme Council on the National Economy and the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. A delegate to the Thirteenth through Seventeenth Party Congresses, he served as a member of the Central Control Commission from 1924 to 1934. Shotman was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.

WORKS

Zapiski starogo bol’shevika, 3rd ed. Leningrad, 1963.
“Lenin v podpol’e (i-iul’-oktiabr’ 1917 g.).” In Vospominaniia o V. I. Lenine, vol. 2. Moscow, 1969.

REFERENCES

Lenin, V. I. Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., part 2. Page 486.
Bondarevskaia, T. P. A. V. Shotman. Moscow, 1963.