Nikolai Podvoisky

Nikolai Podvoisky
Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee
People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs of the Russian SFSR
In office 8 November 1917 – 13 March 1918
Preceded by	Position established (Aleksander Verkhovsky as minister of War and Navy)
Succeeded by	Leon Trotsky
People's Commissar of Military Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR
In office February 1919 – August 1919
Personal details
Born	February 4 (16), 1880 Imperial Russia
Died	July 28, 1948(1948-07-28) (aged 68) Soviet Union
Signature

Nikolai Ilyich Podvoisky (Russian: Николай Ильич Подвойский) (February 4 (16), 1880 – July 28, 1948) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet statesman and the first People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs of the Russian SFSR.

He played a large role in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and wrote many articles for the Soviet newspaper Krasnaya Gazeta. He also wrote a history of the Bolshevik Revolution, which describes the progress of the Russian Revolution.

He was chairperson of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and one of the troika who led the storming of the Winter Palace during the 1917 October Revolution, and commissioned Sergei Eisenstein to create a film version of the 1920 re-enactment in 1927. Immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, he served as the first Commissar of Defence of Russia until March 1918.