Alexander Edmund (Vasil’evich) Shotman (6 September 1880, – 30 September 1937) was a Russian

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

revolutionary and statesman of Finnish origin. He joined the Union of the Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class in 1895.

Biography

Early life

Born into a working-class family. His grandfather was a

lensmann in modern Norwegian or in Danish and older Norwegian spelling (; ) is a term with several distinct meanings in Nordic history. The Icelandic equivalent was a . Fief-holder The term traditionally referred to a holder of a royal fief in Denmark ...

and his father was a former filmmaker who moved to

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

. He started to work as a machinist from a young age in the Lessner, Nobel and Obukhovsky factories.

Revolutionary activities

In 1899 Shotman joined the St. Petersburg

League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class The League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class (LSEWC) was a Marxist group in the Russian Empire. It was founded in St. Petersburg by Vladimir Lenin, Julius Martov, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, Anatoly Vaneyev, Alexander Malchenko, P. ...

and the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP) or the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDP), was a socialist political party founded in 1898 in Minsk, Russian Empire. The ...

at the same time. Shotman was a delegate to the Second Congress of the RSDLP and joined its

faction after the split. During the

1905 Revolution The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire which began on 22 January 1905 and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906, t ...

, he was a member of the St. Petersburg Party Committee and after his expulsion in the fall of 1905 he was a member of the Odessa Committee. Upon his return to the capital, he was co-opted into the St. Petersburg Committee, again working in the Vyborg region. In 1908 A. V. Shotman was a member of the Central Board of the Union of Metalworkers; at the same time, he worked in the underground organization of the Vasileostrovsky district. From 1910 to 1913 he was a Member of the Helsingfors Committee of the Finnish Social Democratic Party. In connection with the failure of the military organization of the Baltic Fleet, he fled abroad, where he participated in the Poronin meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (outskirts of Krakow, October 1913) with party workers, and was co-opted into the Central Committee and the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. Directed to clandestine work in Russia, in November 1913 he was arrested in

Yekaterinoslav Dnipro is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper River, Dnipro River, from which it takes its name. Dnipro is t ...

and exiled for three years to the

Narym Narym (, Southern Selkup dialect for ''swamp'') is a village ('' selo'') in Parabelsky District of Tomsk Oblast, Russia, located on the banks of the Ob River near its confluence with the Ket River, from the village of Parabel. The village ...

region Upon returning from exile after the

February Revolution The February Revolution (), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution or February Coup was the first of Russian Revolution, two revolutions which took place in Russia ...

, A. V. Shotman became a member of the

Tomsk Tomsk (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Tomsk Oblast in Russia, on the Tom (river), Tom River. Population: Founded in 1604, Tomsk is one of the oldest cities in Siberia. It has six univers ...

Committee of the RSDLP (b), and was then sent to Finland. From June 1917, he was a member of the Petrograd district committee of the RSDLP (b), a delegate to the VI Party Congress of the RSDLP (b), and a member of the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic. Shotman was elected as a deputy of the

Constituent Assembly A constituent assembly (also known as a constitutional convention, constitutional congress, or constitutional assembly) is a body assembled for the purpose of drafting or revising a constitution. Members of a constituent assembly may be elected b ...

from the Petrograd provincial electoral district according to list No. 2 ( RSDLP (b) ). After the

July Days The July Days () were a period of unrest in Petrograd, Russia, between . It was characterised by spontaneous armed demonstrations by soldiers, sailors, and industrial workers engaged against the Russian Provisional Government. The demonstrat ...

, the Central Committee of the Party maintained contact with V.I.Lenin and

Grigory Zinoviev Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev (born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky; – 25 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A prominent Old Bolsheviks, Old Bolshevik, Zinoviev was a close associate of Vladimir Lenin prior to ...

, who were in Razliv, and organized Lenin's transfer to Helsingforsin August 1917. He took part in an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) on October 6 (29), 1917 in Udelnaya, which confirmed the party's course towards an armed uprising.

Soviet Russia

After the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

Shoman became deputy People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs, and in 1918 a member of the Presidium of the

Supreme Council of National Economy Supreme Soviet of the National Economy, Superior Soviet of the People's Economy, (Высший совет народного хозяйства, ВСНХ, ''Vysshiy sovet narodnogo khozyaystva'', VSNKh) was the superior state institution for mana ...

. In 1920 he was appointed Chairman of the Ural-Siberian Commission of the

Council of Labour and Defence The Council of Labor and Defense ()Sovet truda i oborony, Latin acronym: STO), first established as the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense in November 1918, was an agency responsible for the central management of the economy and production ...

and a member of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee. From July 25, 1923 to the end of 1924, Alexander Shotman was the chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Autonomous Karelian SSR. He was elected as a delegate to the XI All-Russian and II All-Union Congresses of Soviets. In the 1930s, he was authorized by the Presidium of the

All-Russian Central Executive Committee The All-Russian Central Executive Committee () was (June – November 1917) a permanent body formed by the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies (held from June 16 to July 7, 1917 in Petrograd), then became the ...

for special affairs, head of the personnel department of the Supreme Council of the National Economy.

Arrest and execution

According to Lenin, Shotman was “an old party worker he knew very well who enjoys absolute trust”. However this would not help his case during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

and Shotman was arrested on June 25, 1937, and was convicted on October 29 for “participation in an anti-Soviet Trotskyist organization” and was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court. A day later, on October 30, 1937, the sentence was carried out. He was buried at the Donskoy cemetery. Shotman was rehabilitated on December 24, 1955 by the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

Works

* ''Memories of the fight; how the spark kindled the flame,'' (1935) Moscow: Moscow Co-operative Publishing Society of foreign workers in the U.S.S.R. (in English)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shotman, Alexander 1880 births 1937 deaths Members of the Central Committee of the 6th Conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) Russian revolutionaries Old Bolsheviks Finnish revolutionaries Soviet people of Finnish descent All-Russian Central Executive Committee members Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union members Russian Constituent Assembly members Soviet politicians Great Purge victims from Finland Soviet rehabilitations