Nikolai Ilyich Podvoisky (Russian: Николай Ильич Подвойский; Ukrainian: Микола Ілліч Подвойський; 16 February [O.S.

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

In that same year, he enrolled in the Law Faculty in Yaroslavl, and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), using the alias 'Mironovich'.

Leon Trotsky acknowledged that "under Podvoisky, who easily mastered the functions of command, an impromptu general staff was formed...In order to protect the demonstration from attack, armoured cars were placed at the bridges leading to the capital and at the central crossings of the main streets.

Immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, Podvoisky was one of a troika, with Nikolai Krylenko and Pavel Dybenko appointed People's Commissar for Defence, before they were replaced by Trotsky, in March 1918.

[6] In 1924–30, Podvoisky was a member of the Central Control Commission, and a reliable supporter of Joseph Stalin against Trotsky and other oppositionists.

Podvoisky was a sharply outlined and unique figure in the ranks of Bolshevism, with traits of the Russian revolutionary of the old type — from the theological seminaries — a man of great although undisciplined energy, with a creative imagination which, it must be confessed, often went to the length of fantasy.

But the weaker sides of this ebullient nature were to show themselves chiefly after the conquest of power, when an abundance of opportunities and means gave too many stimuli to the extravagant energy of Podvoisky and his passion for decorative undertakings.

In the conditions of the revolutionary struggle for power, his optimistic decisiveness of character, his self-abnegation, his tirelessness, made him an irreplaceable leader.