Vasily Schmidt attending the 8th Party Congress in 1919

Vasily Vladimirovich Schmidt (Russian: Василий Владимирович Шмидт; December 17, 1886 – July 28, 1938) was a

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

, and later a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

statesman. Born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

to a German Russian working-class family. He was a member of the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; in , ''Rossiyskaya sotsial-demokraticheskaya rabochaya partiya (RSDRP)''), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party, was a socialist po ...

from 1905. From February 1917, he became the secretary of the Petrograd Committee of the RSDLP (B) and the Central Council of Trade Unions of Petrograd and a member of the

Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee The Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee (russian: Петроградский военно-революционный комитет) was a militant group of the Petrograd Soviet and one of several military revolutionary committees that ...

. On 1 December 1918, he was appointed People's Commissar for Labour, a post he held until 29 November 1928. The English journalist

Arthur Ransome Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of childr ...

met him soon after his appointment, and described him as "a clean-shaven, intelligent young man, whose attention to business methods is reflected in his Commissariat, which is extremely clean and very well organised." Schmidt told him that the commissariat was "controlled directly by the unions" , and that he was elected to his position by the General Council of Trades Unions. At the same time a member of the Presidium and secretary of the

All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions The All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (ACCTU; russian: Всесоюзный центральный совет профессиональных союзов, VTsSPS) was the national trade union federation of the Soviet Union. The federati ...

. He was particularly concerned with the statification of the

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits (s ...

s.Kaplan (1968) p 255 During the

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...

, he was arrested on January 5, 1937. Convicted on June 3, 1937, to 10 years in prison, on January 28, 1938, he was sentenced to capital punishment and shot on the same day. Schmidt was rehabilitated on July 30, 1957.

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Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidt, Vasili Old Bolsheviks People's commissars and ministers of the Soviet Union Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Russian Constituent Assembly members Great Purge victims from Russia Politicians from Saint Petersburg Russian people of German descent 1886 births 1938 deaths