Klavdiia Novgorodtseva

Born Mar. 10 (22), 1876, in Ekaterinburg, now Sverdlovsk; died Mar. 23, 1960, in Moscow. Figure in the Russian revolutionary movement. Joined the Communist Party in 1904.

The daughter of a merchant, Novgorodtseva was a teacher in the Urals from 1894 to 1897. She studied in Lesgaft’s courses in St. Petersburg from 1897 to 1899. Returning to the Urals, she participated in Marxist discussion groups. In 1904 she became a member of the Ekaterinburg committee of the RSDLP, and in 1906 a member of the Perm’ committee. She was a delegate to the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the RSDLP. Arrested on several occasions, Novgorodtseva was in exile in Turukhansk Krai from 1915 to 1917 together with her husband, Ia. M. Sverdlov. She managed the Priboi publishing house of the central committee of the RSDLP(B) in Petrograd in 1917. In 1918 she served as a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK). From 1918 to 1920 she was assistant to a secretary of the Party Central Committee and head of the secretariat of the RCP(B) Central Committee. Novgorodtseva was head of VTsIK’s section on children’s institutions from 1920 to 1925 and chief of the children’s literature section and the textbook section of the Union of State Book and Periodical Publishing Houses from 1925 to 1931. She worked on the Central Board for Literature and Publishing Houses from 1931 to 1944. She was granted a special pension in 1946. Novgorodtseva was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.