Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov-Stepanov was one of the oldest participants in the Russian revolutionary movement as well as a Marxist writer, economist, historian and journalist.

Following the Revolution of 1917 he became the People's Commissar for Finance of the RSFSR, until February 1918, when the Bolsheviks briefly formed a coalition government with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

When Skvortsov-Stepanov learned that the script of Mayakovsky's play, Mystery Bouffe had been published in full in a magazine called Theatre Herald, he banned its editors from paying the author's commission.

The decision outraged a senior contributor to Pravda, Lev Sosnovsky, who called for a ban on Mayakovsky's entire works.

[3] Skvortsov-Stepanov was appointed chief editor of Izvestia in June 1925, having supported the triumvirate of Josif Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev against Leon Trotsky.

When the split within the triumvirate came to a head at the congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in December 1926, he backed Stalin, was elected to the CPSU Central Committee, and when the committee met, on 28 December 1925, they decided by a majority to appoint him editor of Leningradskaya Pravda, in place of one of Zinoviev's supporters, despite objections from Zinoviev, Trotsky and others that editors of local newspaper should be appointed locally.