Fomin, Vasilii

Born Apr. 2, 1884, in Moscow; died Sept. 1, 1938. Participant in the Russian revolutionary movement and Soviet state figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1910.

The son of a worker, Fomin became a salesclerk in 1897. He took part in the Revolution of 1905–07 in Moscow and Astrakhan. In 1911 he became a member of the Orenburg Committee of the RSDLP. Fomin was subjected to arrests and exile. During World War I (1914–18), he was mobilized into the army. After the February Revolution of 1917, he became an editor of the newspaper Zvezda and a member of the Minsk soviet, the frontline committee of the Western Front, and the Minsk and Northwestern Oblast committees of the RSDLP(B).

Fomin was a delegate to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets and a member of the All-Union Central Executive Committee. He also worked on the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Council. From 1918 to 1920 he was a member of the collegium of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, as well as head of several of the commission’s departments. During the same period, he served as commissar of the Central Administration of Military Communications and the Central Board of the Means of Communication. In 1921, Fomin became chairman of the Supreme Council on Transportation, deputy people’s commissar of the means of communication, chairman of the Central Administration of River Steamshipping, and a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council on the National Economy. In 1931 he was made deputy people’s commissar for water transportation. From 1927 to 1931 and again after 1935, Fomin was a member of the People’s Commissariat for Domestic Trade of the USSR. In 1924 and 1925 he was a member of the Central Control Commission of the RCP(B).

Fomin was a delegate to the Thirteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Party Congresses.