Viktor Nogin

Viktor Nogin
Chairman of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of Moscow Council of Workers' Deputies
Preceded by	Vadim Rudnev
Succeeded by	Mikhail Pokrovsky
Chairman of the Moscow Military-Revolutionary Committee
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Personal details
Born	Viktor Pavlovich Nogin (1878-02-14)14 February 1878 Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	22 May 1924(1924-05-22) (aged 46)
Resting place	Kremlin wall, Red Square, Moscow
Nationality	Soviet
Political party	Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks)

Viktor Pavlovich Nogin (Russian: Ви́ктор Па́влович Ноги́н; 14 February 1878 – 22 May 1924) was a prominent Bolshevik in Moscow, holding many high positions in the party and in government, including Chairman of the Moscow Military-Revolutionary Committee and Chairman of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of Moscow Council of Workers' Deputies.

Biography

Viktor Nogin, born in Moscow, Russia, was the self-educated son of a shop keeper and a weaver by profession. In 1898 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). He was arrested and exiled several times, spending time in most of Russia's large jails.^[1]

Nogin was considered a "conciliator" Bolshevik. In 1910, following the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, he convinced the leadership to try to re-unite the party, despite strong opposition from Lenin. This ultimately failed.^{[citation needed]}

Nogin police card, 1907

By 1917 Nogin was one of the leaders of the Moscow branch of Bolsheviks. He was a member of the Provisional Committee during the struggle against General Lavr Kornilov's failed coup in Petrograd.^[1] As Chairman of the Moscow Military-Revolutionary Committee, Nogin tried to lead a peaceful and bloodless transfer of power to the Bolsheviks, hoping to avoid more bloodshed in Moscow.^[2] Before a session of the RSDLP Central Committee on November 1, 1917, he advocated the creation of a coalition government involving all of the socialist parties, claiming that a Bolshevik-only government could only be sustained through terror. He left government on November 4, 1917.^[1]

After he formally admitted his mistakes on November 29, 1917, Nogin was appointed to a national post, where he helped restore the nation's textile industry which had been damaged in the revolution. He enjoyed great authority in foreign trade and industry circles.^[1] He accompanied Leonid Krasin to London for the negotiations over the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement. In 1923, Nogin traveled to the United States to arrange a major cotton purchase. While there, he helped the Coolidge administration communicate with Moscow using the code of the Russian government, in an attempt to establish friendly relations between the two countries.^[3]

Viktor Nogin is buried in the Kremlin wall in Red Square, Moscow.

Positions held

Some of the Bolshevik party and government positions held by Viktor Nogin are listed below:^[1]

• Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies (before 1917)
• Central Committee member at the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (July – August 1917)
• People's Commissar for Trade and Industry in the first cabinet of the Council of People's Commissars at the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets
• Chairman of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies, succeeding Menshevik L.M. Khinchuk, who resigned (September 5, 1917)
• Head of Moscow as Chairman of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies (September 19, 1917 – November 13, 1917)
• Labor commissar of the Moscow Region and a deputy to the Constituent Assembly (November 17, 1917)
• Deputy People's Commissar of Labor of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (April 1918)

Legacy

The town of Bogorodsk was renamed Noginsk in his honor in 1930. In 1934, the USSR Post Office produced a 15 Kopeck stamp honoring Viktor Nogin.^[4] A station in the Moscow Metro is Kitay-Gorod, originally called Ploshchad Nogina, after a square in central Moscow that once carried the name of Viktor Nogin (now Slavyanskaya Square). Streets named after Nogin still exist in St.Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Volgograd, Novosibirsk, Pavlovskiy Posad, Samara and Serpukhov.

References