Matvey Ivanovich Skobelev (1885 - 1938), Russian Marxist revolutionary and politician. joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903. After the Russian Revolution of 1905 he went abroad to study at a polytechnic in Vienna. While in Vienna, he became a friend and supporter of Leon Trotsky. Duma Deputy (1912-1917) from the Social Democrats. During the February Revolution of 1917, Skobelev became a leader of the Petrograd Soviet, Skobelev became the new government's Minister of Labour. After the Revolution Skobelev moved to his home city of Baku in then-independent Azerbaijan, until his arrest and execution in 1938 during the Great Purge.