18 Facts About Nikolai Podvoisky

Nikolai Podvoisky played a large role in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and wrote many articles for the Soviet newspaper Krasnaya Gazeta.

Nikolai Podvoisky wrote a history of the Bolshevik Revolution, which describes progress of the Russian Revolution.

Nikolai Podvoisky was born in Kunochevsk village in the Chernihiv province, in to a Ukrainian family, one of seven children of a former teacher who had become a priest.

Nikolai Podvoisky was arrested in 1904 and again in 1905, for helping organise a strike by the city's railway workers, but soon released on both occasions.

Nikolai Podvoisky returned to Russia in 1906, and worked illegally as Bolshevik organiser in St Petersburg, Kostroma, and Baku.

Nikolai Podvoisky was arrested in November 1916, but released during the February Revolution.

In March 1917, Podvoisky was co-opted onto the Petrograd Bolshevik committee, and was appointed head of the Bolshevik Military Organisation.

Nikolai Podvoisky was a founder of the Red Army, but was not an important military commander.

Nikolai Podvoisky rapidly lost influence during the civil war, part of which he spent in Ukraine.

In 1920, Nikolai Podvoisky was appointed Chairman of the Supreme Council of Physical Culture, which ran the system of compulsory physical training of youths prior to their being called up for military service.

Nikolai Podvoisky lost the chairmanship of the Supreme Council of Physical Culture when he was replaced by Nikolai Semashko in 1923, and by 1926 he had lost effective control of Sportintern to the head of the Communist Youth International, Vissarion Lominadze.

Nikolai Podvoisky was engaged in propaganda, literary and journalistic activities for the remainder of his life.

In October 1941, after he was not accepted for military service because of his age, Nikolai Podvoisky volunteered to lead the digging of trenches near Moscow.

On 28 July 1948 Nikolai Podvoisky died of a severe heart attack in Moscow.

Nikolai Podvoisky was buried with military honors in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery.

In 1927, Nikolai Podvoisky was the leading consultant on the film October, directed by Sergei Eisenstein, to mark the tenth anniversary of the October revolution.

Nikolai Podvoisky continued writing on sport and as a party historian until he retired on health grounds in 1935.

Nikolai Podvoisky married Nina Didrikil, an Old Bolshevik, who worked at the Lenin Institute, preparing Lenin's manuscript for publication.