Nikolai Ivanovich Derbyshev

Born Mar. 9 (21), 1879, in Tomsk; died Feb. 13, 1955, in Moscow. Soviet statesman and party figure. Member of the CPSU from 1896. Born into the family of a worker.

Derbyshev was a mechanic on type-setting machines by profession. He was a member of the Tomsk, Omsk (from 1901), and Ural (from 1905) committees of the RSDLP. In 1907 he began to do party work in St. Petersburg. He suffered arrests, imprisonment, and exile (in 1900, 1902, and 1906). After the February Revolution of 1917 he was chairman of the Central Council of Factory and Plant Committees of Petrograd. He was a delegate from the Urals to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). He took part in the October armed uprising in Petrograd. He was commissar of the press of the Revolutionary Military Committee. After the October Revolution he was appointed peoples’ commissar of the press. In November 1917, however, he made a political error in leaving the Council of People’s Commissars because of disagreement with the policy of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). He then worked as a secretary of the Petrograd Trade Union Bureau. From 1918 to 1920 he was deputy chairman of the Sovnarkhoz (regional economic council) for the northern region. Then he was made head of the Main Directorate of the Printing Industry. From 1921 to 1926 he was chairman of the central committee of the printers’ trade union. He was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. In 1927 he was sent on managerial economic work; in 1933 he became a personal pensioner.