Ivan Teodorovich

Ivan Adolfovich Teodorovich (Russian: Ива́н Адольфо́вич Теодо́рович; Polish: Iwan Adolfowicz Teodorowicz) (September 10 (O. S. August 29), 1875 in Smolensk – September 20, 1937[1]) was a Russian Bolshevik activist, and the first Commissar for Food when the Council of People's Commissars was established (October - November 1917). He was also a revolutionary, Soviet statesman, historian of the revolutionary movement, first people's commissary for food (1917).

Teodorovich in 1917

Teodorovich, the son of a land surveyor from Smolensk, was born into a family of ethnic Polish origin.[2] His father, two maternal uncles, and grandfather had all participated in insurrectionary activity; it was from this background, Teodorovich would write, that he first learned to hate "czarism, its officials, and military establishment."[2] Teodorovich's childhood was spent in severe poverty: his mother, struggling to support six sons, worked as a seamstress and laundrywoman.[2]

Teodorovich was educated at Moscow State University, where he joined an early Marxist group in 1895. From 1902 to 1903, he was a member of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. After a series of arrests, in 1903 the czarist authorities sent Teodorovich to an exile in Yakutia. Escaping in 1905, he fled to Switzerland, where he made personal contacts with Vladimir Lenin. In October 1905 Teodorovich returned to Russia and operated in Saint Petersburg, promoted to a member of the Central Committee in 1907. In May 1909 he was arrested again and remained in custody until the February Revolution of 1917. In Summer 1917 Teodorovich co-chaired Saint Petersburg City Hall, at the same time working towards the Bolshevik revolt against the Provisional Government.[1]

After the February Revolution of 1917, he left the place of exile, arrived in Petrograd in mid-March . He was a delegate to the 7th (April) All-Russian Conference, where he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee [3] , and the VIth Congress of the RSDLP (B). From August 1917, deputy chairman of the Petrograd City Council, then a member of the council and special presence in food. After the October Revolution in the first composition, SNK took the post of People's Commissar for Food.

Immediately after the October Revolution, Teodorovich became the first Commissar for Agriculture in the first Bolshevik Government. In November he resigned due to political disagreement with Lenin's majority over a coalition with the Mensheviks and other factions (Teodorovich supported a broad coalition, against Lenin's will). In 1920 he returned to the board of the Commissariat for Agriculture and rose to Deputy Commissar in May 1922; in 1928-1930 he chaired the Peasants branch of Comintern.[1] As the Bolsheviks' expert on agriculture, Teodorovich delivered speeches to various councils and international forums, and authored brochures, journal and newspaper articles dealing with agriculture and agrarian policy. Teodorovich was a proponent of Lenin’s New Economic Policy, he further endorsed liberal land reforms (delegating authority from state to peasant on land) Contrary to the Bolshevik’s platform on agrarian policy, Teodorovich vehemently opposed the policy of food requisition and War Communism. He was a supporter of the creation of a homogeneous socialist government with the participation of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries . After The Central Committee of the RSDLP (B) rejected the agreement with these parties, Teodorovich on November 4 (17), 1917 signed a statement of withdrawal from the SNK, but continued to fulfill his duties until December. [2]

"(T)he disagreement concerned the question of whether our party had to start with "war communism" or whether it was possible to proceed from what was called the "new economic policy" in 1921. I held in 1917 of the last opinion .." - Ivan Teodorovich Autobiography[3]

In the articles of the 1920s, Teodorovich interpreted the NEP as a means of accumulating funds in the capitalist agrarian sector through the development of “strong” peasant farms, which was to serve as a source of funds for industrialization, including its transition to socialism. In the People's Commissariat Teodorovich supervised the work of economist N. D. Kondratiev who led the department of agricultural economics and statistics of the Department of Agriculture, provided him with certain protection and patronage (in particular, contributed in 1920 to his release from arrest).

At the beginning of 1918 he left for Siberia after parting ways with Lenin's first government. In the years 1919-1920, he was in the red partisan units in Siberia. In the years 1920-1928 Teodorovich served as a member of the College of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the RSFSR. From May 1922 to 1928 deputy of the People's Commissar of Agriculture of the RSFSR, 1926-1930 Director of the International Agrarian Institute, from March 1928 to 1930 secretary general of the Peasant International ( Krestintern ), 1929-1935 editor of the Publishers of the Association of Former Political Excuers and Deportee, 1929- 1935 editor of the magazine "Katorga i ssyłka". The letter was closed after liquidation by the ordinance of the Central Committee of the WKP (b) of the Association of Former Political Excuses and exiles on June 25, 1935for factional activities [2]

In November 1930 Teodorovich was condemned as a counter-revolutionary "Kondratievist".[4]

Teodorovich was convicted in the trial of the so-called Moskva Center group (involving a total of 120 people). The trial was sanctioned by Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov on September 15, 1937. [5] Teodorovich was executed five days later. He was a victim of Stalin's Great Purges.

Ivan Teodorovich was posthumously rehabilitated on April 11th 1956,and is buried in the Don Cemetery in Moscow.

Famous works: On the state regulation of the peasant economy. M., 1921 The fate of the Russian peasantry, M., 1923, 1924, 1925 On the question of agricultural policy in the RSFSR, Moscow, 1923 The lessons of the union of workers and peasants in the USSR. Report at the 2nd Congress of the International Peasant Council, Moscow, 1925 Eight years of our peasant politics. M., 1926 Issues of industrialization and agriculture. Sverdlovsk, 1927 The historical significance of the party "Narodnaya Volya", M., ed. Politikatorzhan, 1930 About Gorky and Chekhov, M. - L., GIZ, 1930 "March 1, 1881," M., 1931

Family: Wife - Okulova-Teodorovich, Glafira Ivanovna (23.4 (6.5) .1878–19.10.1957) - Soviet state and party leader. Son - Konstantin Ivanovich Teodorovich (1907-1964) - an artist and a writer