He was born in
Gorodishche,
Penza Governorate in a peasant family of
Russian ethnicity. In 1899, Smirnov joined the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and became a
Bolshevik. He led Party activity in
Moscow,
Saint Petersburg,
Vyshniy Volochok,
Rostov,
Kharkov, and
Tomsk. Smirnov was subject to repeated arrests. In 1916, he was called up for army service in a reserve regiment in Tomsk. In 1917, he became a member of the executive committee of the Tomsk Soviet. In August of the same year, Smirnov was one of the organizers and managers of the Bolshevist publishing house
"Volna" (Wave) in Moscow. He was a deputy of the
Constituent Assembly. During the
Russian Civil War, Smirnov was a member of the
Revolutionary Military Council of the
Eastern Front (August 1918–April 1919), and the
5th Army (April 1919–May 1920). Smirnov played a pivotal role in defeating the army of
Alexander Kolchak during the war, and in the subsequent execution of Kolchak on 7 February 1920. In 1920–1923, Smirnov was a member of the Executive Committee of the
Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). At the same time, he chaired the
Siberian Revolutionary Committee and was a member of the Siberian bureau of the Party. Smirnov was known to have had close ties with the
Cheka. Smirnov's second wife,
Varvara Yakovleva, was a Cheka officer and the deputy head of the Petrograd Cheka. Smirnov administered massacres of armed rebellious peasants in
Tyumen and the
Altai Mountains, and was the man who organized the capture of General
Roman von Ungern-Sternberg in 1921. In 1921–1922, Smirnov was a secretary of the
Petrograd Committee and Northwestern Bureau of the Executive Committee of the Party. He was the closest associate of
Grigory Zinoviev at the time. Smirnov took part in mass executions and deportations from Petrograd of people of the "exploiter class". From April 1922 through July 1923, Smirnov was a member of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet of the National Economy (ВСНХ) of the
RSFSR; from September 1922 through May 1923, its deputy chairman. In July 1923, Smirnov was appointed
People's Commissar for Posts and Telegraph. In 1923, Smirnov became an active member of the
Trotskyist opposition. In October 1923, Smirnov signed
"The Declaration of 46", which attacked by implication the influence of
Joseph Stalin as
General Secretary of the Party. After
Lenin's death in 1924, Smirnov publicly demanded removal of Stalin as General Secretary, but Stalin kept his position. , 1927. Smirnov is the second to the left, seated next to Trotsky In 1927, Smirnov signed the
"Declaration of the Eighty-three", another anti-Stalin manifesto. Stalin now moved against him. On 11 November 1927, Smirnov was removed from his Post and Telegraph position. A month later, he was expelled from the Party by the
15th Party Congress. On 31 December 1927, Smirnov was sentenced to three years of internal exile by the
OGPU Board. In October 1929, Smirnov "broke with Trotskyism" and was reinstated in the Party in May 1930. In 1929–1932, he was director of
Saratovkombainstroy, the
Combine harvester assembly plant in
Saratov. In 1932, Smirnov was appointed head of the Department of Erection of New Buildings at the
People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. On 14 January 1933, Smirnov was arrested by the
OGPU, and a month later was again expelled from the Party, accused of forming an "anti-party group" in order to remove Stalin. Historian
Pierre Broué showed that by the end of 1932 Smirnov had joined a clandestine
bloc which Trotsky characterized as an alliance to fight Stalinist repression. On 14 April 1933, he was sentenced to five years in
labor camps. Some of those arrested and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment soon repented once again and were “forgiven” by Stalin — until 1936. Ivan Smirnov himself, sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment, did not write any more statements of repentance and was held in the
Suzdal Special Purpose Prison until, in August 1936, he was brought to the
First Moscow Trial together with Mrachkovsky, Ter-Vaganyan and Goltsman — in the case of the so-called “anti-Soviet united Trotskyist-Zinoviev center” which had been defeated back in early 1933, had now, in retrospect, turned into a terrorist “center” that
organized the murder of Kirov in December 1934, and then a number of failed assassination attempts. According to
Alexander Orlov, close relatives of the defendants were a reliable tool of blackmail for the investigators, and, in particular, Smirnov’s ex-wife, A. N. Safonova, begged him to take part in the judicial farce, as she, in turn, feared for the fate of her children. The
Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union sentenced him to death on 24 August 1936, and he was executed the next day. He was buried in a mass grave at the
Donskoye Cemetery. Smirnov was
rehabilitated in 1988.It is clear.. that Trotsky did have a clandestine organization inside the USSR in this period and that he maintained communication with it. It is equally clear that a united oppositional bloc was formed in 1932. [...] From the available evidence, it seems that
Trotsky envisioned no “terrorist” role for the bloc, although his call for a “new political revolution” to remove “the cadres, the bureaucracy” might well have been so interpreted in Moscow. There is also reason to believe that after the decapitation of the bloc through the removal of
Zinoviev,
Kamenev, Smirnov, and others the organization comprised mainly lower-level less prominent oppositionists: followers of Zinoviev, with whom Trotsky attempted to maintain direct contact. It is equally probable that the
NKVD knew about the bloc. Trotsky’s and Sedov’s staffs were thoroughly infiltrated, and Sedov’s closest collaborator in 1936,
Mark Zborowski, is said to have been an NKVD agent. In 1936, the 1932 bloc would be interpreted by the
NKVD as a terrorist plot and would form the original pretext for Ezhov’s campaign to destroy the former opposition. Smirnov, Gol’tsman, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky (in absentia) would be the defendants at the 1936 show trial, and the 1932 events would form the evidential basis for their prosecution. ==References==