# Nikolay Dobrokhotov (1879)

Nikolay Fedorovich Dobrokhotov (1879–1938) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet statesman and politician.

## Biography

Nikolay Dobrokhotov was born on May 22, 1879, in the village of Rozhdestveno, Borovsky Volost, Danilovsky District, Yaroslavl Governorate, in the family of a village priest; the latter fact was never mentioned in biographies. Graduated from the Yaroslavl Theological Seminary.

### Revolutionary activity

He began working as a teacher at the Spas–Kiprianovskaya School in the Vyatka Volost. He actively conducted anti–government propaganda among the peasants, which led to a denunciation and dismissal, after which in 1905, he was transferred to the Zaozersky School of the Uglich District. In 1906, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolshevik) and, as a member of this party, was engaged in agitation and propaganda work in the countryside, distributed prohibited literature, for which he was fired in 1907. In connection with the difficult financial situation, he sang in the church choir of the Spassky Monastery, lived in its hostel; at the same time continued party work. Arrested twice, spent several months in jail. In 1910–1913, he worked as a teacher in the Perm Governorate.
In 1915, he was drafted into the army. He served in Yaroslavl as a private of the 211th Reserve Infantry Regiment. After the February Revolution, he began active political activity, became an influential figure in the Yaroslavl Council of Soldiers' Deputies. In May 1917, he headed the provincial bureau of councils. In August, he became a member of the city committee for the protection of the revolution, which dissolved the officer organizations, disbanded the shock battalions, and removed the head of the garrison. In September 1917, as a representative from Yaroslavl, he attended a meeting in the Bolshevik Central Committee, which considered the issue of the speedy transfer of power into the hands of the soviets. In October 1917, he was in Petrograd, participated in the work of the Second All–Russian Congress of Soviets, the decisions of which secured the coming to power of the Bolsheviks.

### Political activity

On November 4, 1917, he was elected Chairman of the executive committee of the Yaroslavl City Council. Simultaneously, on November 10, he became the temporary commissar of the garrison, in fact, his chief. In February 1918, at a meeting of the united congress of councils of the province, he was elected Chairman of the Provincial Executive Committee, that is, the head of the executive branch in the province. David Zackheim became the Head of the City Executive Committee, with whom Dobrokhotov had serious disagreements, in particular on the issue of the Brest Peace, in the ratification of which Dobrokhotov took part at the 7th Emergency Party Congress and the 4th Emergency Congress of Councils. A few weeks before the start of the anti–Bolshevik uprising in Yaroslavl, Dobrokhotov was relieved of his post, retaining his membership in the provincial executive committee. The heads of the city and provincial executive committees, David Zackheim and Semyon Nakhimson, were shot at the beginning of the uprising.
Dobrokhotov was sent for party work to the Tutaevsky District, already in September 1918, he headed the district committee of the party and became a member of the executive committee of the district council. Delegate of the 8th Party Congress. In March 1919, he was summoned to Moscow at the disposal of the Central Committee of the Party. In early July, he appeared in Yaroslavl as a representative of the Central Committee with broad powers in connection with numerous peasant and deserter uprisings in the province (the total number of rebels reached 25 thousand people). He chaired meetings of the provincial committee of the party and the provincial executive committee. In mid–July, the former Chairman of the Provincial Executive Committee, Tsvetkov, handed over all the affairs to Dobrokhotov as the temporary head of the executive branch. Having taken a number of urgent measures, he convened an extraordinary provincial party conference, at which a new leadership was elected.
By decision of the Central Committee, he was sent to Ukraine. He headed the Kherson Executive Committee, was engaged in the creation of a fortified area to prevent the breakthrough of the Wrangel troops to the right bank of the Dnieper. Description of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine: "An old party member with a good Bolshevik temper... In a political situation, he quickly navigates... Not involved in squabbles. Provincial worker". In 1924–1925, he served as People's Commissar of Labour of the Ukrainian Republic and at the same time headed the central commission to combat unemployment. Then for several years he managed the Soyuzkartofel Organization.

### Last years

He fell ill with tuberculosis and in 1929 retired due to disability. He lived with his sister–teacher in the village of Verkhniy Pochinok, Bereznyakovsky Village Council, Danilovsky District. He did not hold any positions, but actively participated in collectivization, in the organization of the Zarya collective farm, achieved the closure of the church and the creation of a mechanized mill in it, the construction of a seven–year school. He collected materials on the suppression of the Yaroslavl Rebellion for the editorial board of the multi–volume History of the Civil War.
In the conditions of the beginning of repressions, the old principled Bolshevik turned out to be inconvenient for the local authorities. He repeatedly wrote to Moscow in defense of arrested rural communists, sometimes with success; he allowed himself to accuse the prosecutor and the worker of the district committee who arrived at the collective farm for a show trial of drunkenness and prejudice. In the summer of 1937, the Danilov District Party Committee accused Dobrokhotov of concealing his participation in the 1927 Trotskyist opposition. On June 22, a personal case was started and ended: the pensioner was accused, for example, of the fact that the collective farms of the Bereznyakovo Village Council "over the past two years have left up to half of the grown bread in the fields". On the same day, Nikolay Fedorovich was expelled from the party, the next he was arrested, and on October 6, 1938, by the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, he was shot. He was buried in a mass grave near the village of Selifontovo near Yaroslavl.
In 1958, he was rehabilitated. In his honor, in July 1980, a passage in Yaroslavl was named. When a burial was discovered in 1989, the remains of Dobrokhotov were identified by the tibia – he was two meters tall.