He was born in a peasant family in Bochkarevo, now in the
Kirensky District of the
Irkutsk Oblast. He found an opportunity to study at the . In 1915–17, he served as a mechanic at the Kharkov Telegraph Office. At the outbreak of the
October Revolution of 1917, Kozhevnikov became a member of the Communist Party and was soon appointed commissar of the
Kharkiv postal and telegraph district. In February 1918, he became an extraordinary commissioner for five southern postal and telegraph districts, and from May to September 1918, Kozhevnikov became extraordinary commissar for communications of the entire
Donets-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. In August 1918, the
Revolutionary Military Council decided to send an expeditionary partisan detachment to the rear of the White Guard troops on the
Eastern Front. In September 1918, Kozhevnikov was chosen to organize the partisan struggle in
Tatarstan and
Bashkortostan. The detachment of Kozhevnikov, formed mainly from volunteers of the
Kursk,
Nizhny Novgorod and
Astrakhan postal and telegraph districts, numbered initially some 500 men. By November 1918, his detachment already had 12,000 men and became known as the . In early December 1918, an order was sent from Moscow to redeploy the Partisan Army through the
Bugulma railway station to the
Southern Front and concentrate it in the area of
Novy Oskol in the Kursk province. In January 1919, Kozhevnikov detachments numbered more than 30,000 men who fought in the
battles for Kupyansk, Starobelsk and Lugansk. Soon on the basis of these forces, the
13th Red Army was formed under the command of Kozhevnikov. The bulk of the army's personnel consisted of natives of Tatarstan. In a telegram,
Yakov Sverdlov reported in February 1919: "In the Kozhevnikov army there are over 10,000 Muslims". On April 16, 1919, he was replaced by
Anatoliy Gekker at the head of the 13th Army. In 1920, Kozhevnikov served in the , as commissar of the detachment. In May 1921, Kozhevnikov sent an emissary to the
Primorsky Krai for the organization of the partisan movement. In 1922–23, Kozhevnikov became Ambassador in the
Bukharan People's Soviet Republic and
to Lithuania, and in 1924–1926, worked in the
People's Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs of the USSR. Kozhevnikov's career ended on January 21, 1926, when he was arrested by the
OGPU and sent to the
Solovki prison camp. At Solovki, there was a camp for juvenile offenders (for children aged 12–16), of which prisoner Kozhevnikov became the director. In 1931, Kozhevnikov fled the camp, but was soon caught and severely beaten. He was examined by a commission of psychiatrists, which concluded that Kozhevnikov was mentally paranoid. After that, Kozhevnikov was taken to Moscow and shot around April 15, 1931. ==Sources==