Vladimir Smirnov (politician)

Vladimir Mikhailovich Smirnov (Russian: Влади́мир Миха́йлович Смирно́в; 1887 – 26 May 1937) was a Russian Communist and member of the Bolshevik Party (from 1907), where he advocated a militant and doctrinally pure line.

Smirnov, who was closely associated with Nikolai Bukharin, was a political commissar in the Red Army and represented the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party and was the main spokesman of the Military opposition of 1919. He was a member of the editorial board of Kommunist, the organ of the Petrograd Committee of the party. Years before the October Revolution he pushed for a more militant party tactics, much to the annoyance of Lenin. He became the finances director of the governing body of the Moscow oblast, Sovnarkom, which exercised wide powers and had high ambitions of local rule, although it was abolished as early as June, 1918. His attempts at forming similar bodies proved short-lived.

Smirnov served in the governing bureau of the Supreme Economic Council, set up in December 1917. His Left fraction initially dominated the Council and Lenin had to take their position into account.

At the 8th Party Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Smirnov appeared as a delegate from the 5th Army. On 20 March 1919, Smirnov gave a speech to the Congress on the use of former Tsarist officers (termed "Specialists" within the party) and of political commissars in the Red Army. Responding to accusations from Grigory Sokolnikov that he opposed the use of officers, which by this point had become a key part of Bolshevik military strategy, he denied favouring the use of partisan militias in the Russian Civil War. He did, however, warn of the inadequate political mechanisms that the Soviet authority had at its disposal to control the officer-specialists. Arguing for the repeal of Decree on Revolutionary Military Councils, he said to the Congress:

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