Petr Voevodin

Voevodin, Petr Ivanovich 

Born June 30 (July 12), 1884, in Sumy; died Nov. 25, 1964, in Moscow. Soviet Party and state figure. Hero of Socialist Labor (1964). Member of the Communist Party from 1899. Born into a worker’s family.

At the age of 13, Voevodin began working in a plant in Ekaterinoslav, where he joined a Social Democratic workers’ circle in 1899. He conducted Party work in Ekaterinoslav, Saratov, Samara, Chita, Tomsk, Omsk, Zlatoust, and other cities. In October 1905 he was chief of the combat detachment of the Samara committee of the Bolsheviks in Samara. He was subjected to repressive actions. Voevodin emigrated and lived in America in 1912 and 1913. In 1913 he returned illegally to Russia, worked in Baku, and was arrested. In 1917 he was chairman of the Krai Food and Economic Council of Western Siberia and the Urals. The following year he chaired the Regional Sovnarkhoz (Council of the Economy) of Western Siberia. In 1919, Voevodin was a representative of the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) and political commissar of the propaganda and agitation train Oktiabr’-skaia Revoliutsiia in the Western and Southern fronts. In 1920 he was chief commissar of the Moscow-Vindava Rybinsk Railroad. He was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. From 1920 he worked in economics and publishing; he edited the popular science magazine Elektrifikatsiia and the scientific journal Elektrichestvo. In 1920 he became a personal pensioner. Voevodin was a delegate to the Twenty-second Congress of the CPSU in 1961. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin and various medals.