Pyotr Kobozev

Pyotr Kobozev was born in 1878 in the village of Pesochnya, Spassky Uyezd (now, Putyatinsky district), Ryazan Governorate, in the family of Aleksey Fedotovich Kobozev,[1] a Moscow railroad employee.[2] Influenced by his mother, the daughter of a church acolyte, he went to a theological school and later to the Moscow seminary.[3] In 1895 he left (other sources say he was expelled for participating in a student uprising) the seminary and entered the Moscow secondary school of Ivan Findler.[3] In 1896 he began to take part in A.P. Alabin's Marxist circle,[3] where he met his future wife, Alevtina Ivanovna Rakitina,[4] a gimnasium student.[3] They married in 1898.[3]

In 1898 he entered the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and started studies at the Moscow Higher Technical School.[3] But in 1899 he was expelled from it due to being involved in the all-Russian student strike.[3] In 1900, together with his wife and a new-born daughter, he was exiled to Riga, Latvia, where he lived and studied at the Riga Polytechnical Institute until 1904.[3] In Riga, Pyotr Kobozev worked at the German-Dutch Van der Zypen und Charlier company manufacturing railroad wagons. He was part of the Riga RSDLP section and a member of the editorial board of the Voice of the Soldier Newspaper. Later on, he, together with his family, went to the petrolium mines in the Caucasus, but returned to Moscow in a short while, where he was arrested and exiled to Riga again. He was blacklisted for his revolutionary activity, which resulted in unemployment, and P. Kobozev had to earn through private tuturing.

In 1915 — 1916 P. Kobozev and his family were in exile in Orenburg, where he worked as a railroad engineer.[3] In Orenburg P. Kobozev became the leader of the local section of RSDLP, and was under personal control of the governorate's gandarmerie head.[3]

Monument to Pyotr Kobozev in Orenburg

In autumn 1923, the severely ill Pyotr Kobozev returned to Moscow and asked to transfer him to academic work. In 1923 — 1928 he was the rector of Moscow Land Survey Institute; since 1928 to 1929 — the rector of Leningrad Polytechnical Institute. Later he returned to Moscow Land Survey Institute where he organized the department of aerial survey.[3]

In 1938 he received the degree of candidate of technical sciences. He gave lectures on project geometry, hydraulics and aerial surveying.[3] He was the head of the National Scientific Institute of Locomotive Construction, took part in organizing building the Moskva-Volga Canal, and gave the technical conclusion on the project of Dnieper Hydroelectric Station.[3]

Spouse: Alevtina Ivanovna Rakitina (1880–1968).[6]

Children: Sofia (born 1899, Moscow), Anna (b. 1906), Andrey (b. 1908–1965),[7] a lecturer and musician, twins Nikolay (1913–1977),[7] engineer, and Natalia (b. 1913–1991).[6]

Pyotr Kobozev lived in Moscow in the 3rd House of the Soviets.[8]

• P. Kobozev was mentioned in the book Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed.

Pyotr Kobozev (played by Armen Djigarkhanyan) is a character in the Uzbek 1970 film 'Extraordinary comissar' (Russian: Чрезвычайный комиссар) about the years of the Soviet regime establishment in Turkestan.[9]

• In Orenburg there is a monument dedicated to Pyotr Kobozev. It was set up in 1957. Its location is the park at the intersection of the Kobozev and Postnikov streets. It is a bust created by A. Chernikova.[10]
• Streets in a number of cities are named after P. Kobozev: Orenburg, Baku, Aktobe, Samara, Ulyanovsk, Donetsk, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok.