Following the October Revolution, he joined the Bolsheviks in March 1918 and was immediately appointed military commander of the Smolensk region.

In October 1918, disagreements with the Soviet commander-in-chief Jukums Vācietis caused Svechin to be removed from his position and to be appointed professor at the Academy of General Staff of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.

In February 1931, in a purge of former tsarist officers in the Red Army, Svechin was arrested and sentenced to five years imprisonment in the gulags.

On 29 July 1938, he was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on charges of "participating in a counter-revolutionary organization" and "training terrorists".

[2] According to historian Alexander Hill, Svechin was executed on 29 August 1938,[2] and his body buried in the Moscow region of Kommunarka.