Skobelev, Matvey Ivanovich

Born in Baku in 1885 in the family of an industrialist, a Molokan , in the middle of the 19th century, he was administratively expelled for religious beliefs from the central provinces of Russia. At 18, he joined the RSDLP . He participated in the Revolution of 1905 - he led the strike of oil workers, fled abroad due to the threat of arrest. He contacted the organization of the RSDLP (Plekhanov, Martov), ​​lived abroad at the expense of the party, wrote articles, participated in the publication of party newspapers of the Social Democrats. He participated in the congress of the Second International in Copenhagen (1910) as a delegate to the RSDLP . He entered the Higher Technical School in Vienna, graduated in 1912. In parallel, he was a close associate of L. D. Trotsky , working in his Vienna newspaper Pravda . After graduation, he returned to Russia.

He was elected to the Duma in 1912 , as a representative of the Russian population of Transcaucasia - from the Russian Curia of Transcaucasia. He spoke in the State Duma mainly on budgetary and economic issues. In the summer of 1914, he led the Baku strike . It resulted in the most powerful pre-war strike in the Baku oil fields, as a result of which oil production was practically stopped. In 1915, he spent 4 months in prison for an article in a Baku working newspaper (without deprivation of deputy authority). On issues of World War I, he belonged to the defenders , criticized the tsar, but did not publicly advocate for his defeat in the war, but, on the contrary, declared the task of bringing the war to a victorious end.

Mason (included in one of the St. Petersburg lodges of the Great East of the peoples of Russia ).

1917

During the February Revolution, Skobelev became one of the organizers of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers 'Deputies, was elected a fellow chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' Deputies , and then became deputy chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. So his merits in the revolution were noted - in the early days of the February Revolution, he successfully led the organization of the revolutionary uprising in the Sveaborg and Kronstadt fleets.

At the end of May, it was delegated by the Petrograd Council to Stockholm at the Zimmerwald Conference; by order of the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet, he returns from the road and enters the coalition Provisional Government on May 5 as the Minister of Labor. Since May 5, the Minister of Labor of the Provisional Government of the second and third (first and second coalition) compositions.

At the first congress of Soviets of workers 'and soldiers' deputies in June 1917, he was elected deputy chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets of workers 'and soldiers' deputies . After the adoption of the Bolshevik resolution “On Power” by the Petrograd Soviet on August 31, Skobelev resigned with all the Socialist Revolutionary and Menshevik Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet on September 6. After the Kornilov uprising on September 5, 1917, he defiantly refused further participation in the Provisional Government. Member of the State Conference in Moscow and the Democratic Conference , member of the Pre-Parliament .

Soviet period

Matvey Skobelev accepted the October Revolution with restraint. He condemned the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly , of which he was elected a member from Transcaucasia, and the shooting of a protest demonstration. But then he officially departed from the Mensheviks and worked in the system of “working” cooperation. In 1918 he worked at the Petrosoyuz (center of the Petrograd workers' cooperatives). At the end of 1918, Skobelev made his way through Kiev, Odessa, then by sea in Transcaucasia. On the way, in Kherson and Nikolaev he makes public reports on the need to strengthen the Soviet regime and on the urgent tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As an agent of the Soviet government, he is arrested in Kiev by the Hetman and Novorossiysk Denikin authorities, but is quickly released under pressure from the Social Democrats. Having reached Transcaucasia, 1919 and part of 1920 spends in Baku, taking part in the illegal supply of food, through Krasnovodsk, the Red Army in Transcaspia, in order to organize successful military operations of the Red Army against the “whites”.

After unsuccessful attempts to persuade the Georgian Social Democrats to jointly oppose Denikin with the Red Army at the end of 1920, Skobelev makes his way abroad and settles in France. After meeting in London with Lenin's Ambassador Leonid Krasin and Politburo member Lev Kamenev, he began semi-legal work in France in 1921 to prepare trade relations with France and recognize the Soviet government. Commercial activity was carried out from a private Paris office created in his name, was widely covered in the press and was closely associated with the London Arcos ^[1] .

Until the end of 1923 he was in charge of the trade relations of the Soviets in France with Paris. Contributed to the establishment of trade relations between Soviet Russia and France and Belgium. In 1922 , as soon as it became possible under the conditions of work in France, he came to Moscow and made out his membership in the RCP (b), received a party ticket. In January 1924, after the judicial arrest of Soviet goods in France, by order of Moscow, he liquidated all affairs in Paris and moved to London, where until November 1924 he worked as a member of the London trade delegation. After France recognized the Soviet government, he returned to Paris and, as an authorized person of the NKVT of the USSR, took part in the organization of the Paris envoy and trade mission; at the beginning of 1925 he surrendered to them all French affairs and returned to Moscow.

Returning to Russia in 1925, from May 1925 to June 1926 he was chairman of the Foreign Trade section of the USSR State Planning Commission . Since June 1926, he has been a member of the Main Concession Committee and chairman of the Concession Commission of the RSFSR, and is a member of the board of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade. Collaborates with Trotsky on foreign trade. In 1936-1937 he worked in the All-Union Radio Committee, in the Research Institute of Radio Committee.

At the end of 1937, by order of N. I. Yezhov, he was arrested. By the decision of the primary party organization, he was expelled from the members of the CPSU (B.) As an “enemy of the people." July 29, 1938 was shot on charges of participation in a terrorist organization . Rehabilitated in 1957 .

• Skobelev Matvey Ivanovich Big Russian Encyclopedia
• State Duma of the Russian Empire, 1906-1917: Encyclopedia. Moscow: Russian Political Encyclopedia, 2008. P. 562. ISBN 978-5-8243-1031-3 .
• Historical Encyclopedia