Central Executive Committee of the Navy

(Tsentroflot), an elective body that guided the work of the central committees of the fleets and flotillas in 1917. Tsentroflot was established in June 1917 at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets to replace the Petrograd Soviet’s naval section, which had been formed on May 16, 1917. The members of Tsentroflot were elected from among the delegates to the Congress who represented the fleets and flotillas. Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks held a majority on the committee, which was chaired by the Right Socialist Revolutionary M. N. Abramov; the deputy chairman was P. I. Klimenko. The small Bolshevik faction ineluded I. D. Sladkov, N. A. Pozharov, N. G. Markin, V. M. Marusev, and V. F. Polukhin.

Tsentroflot pursued a conciliatory policy. During the July Days of 1917 it supported the counterrevolutionary activities of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the bourgeois Provisional Government. It had therefore lost all influence among the sailors by October. During the October Armed Uprising in Petrograd, the members of Tsentroflot, headed by Abramov, joined the Committee to Save the Homeland and the Revolution and took part in counterrevolutionary activities. On Oct. 27 (Nov. 9), 1917, the sailors’ deputies to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets dissolved Tsentroflot and replaced it with the Provisional Naval Revolutionary Committee, which was headed by the Bolshevik I. I. Vakhrameev.