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

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, ...

politician A politician is a person who participates in Public policy, policy-making processes, usually holding an elective position in government. Politicians represent the people, make decisions, and influence the formulation of public policy. The roles ...

, and later a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

statesman. Born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

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), 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 ...

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 (PMRC) () was a militant group of the Petrograd Soviet and one of several military revolutionary committees that were created in the Russian Republic. Initially the committee was created on 25 Oc ...

Vasily Schmidt attending the 8th Party Congress in 1919

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 childre ...

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; , VTsSPS) was the national trade union federation of the Soviet Union. The federation was established in January 1918. In October 1990, it was dissolved, and replaced by the General Confede ...

. He was particularly concerned with the statification of the

trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

s.Kaplan (1968) p 255 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 ...

, 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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