Alexei Rykov

Alexei Ivanovich Rykov (25 February 1881 – 15 March 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician and statesman, most prominent as premier of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and 1924 to 1930 respectively. He was one of the accused in Joseph Stalin's show trials during the Great Purge.

Rykov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898. After it split into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in 1903, he joined the Bolshevik faction led by Vladimir Lenin. Months prior to the October Revolution of 1917, he became a member of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets and was elected to the Bolshevik Party Central Committee during the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party. Rykov, a moderate, often came into political conflict with Lenin and more radical Bolsheviks but proved influential when the October Revolution finally overthrew the Russian Provisional Government. He served in many roles in the new government, starting October–November (Old Style) as People's Commissar for Internal Affairs on the first roster of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) chaired by Lenin.

During the Russian Civil War (1918–1923), Rykov oversaw the implementation of the "War Communism" economic policy, and helped oversee the distribution of food to the Red Army and the Red Navy. After Lenin was incapacitated by his third stroke in March 1923 Rykov and Lev Kamenev were elected by the Sovnarkom to serve as deputy premiers of the Soviet Union. When Lenin died in January 1924, and Rykov was chosen in February by the Council of People's Commissars as premier of both the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and of the Soviet Union. In December 1930 he was removed from the Politburo. From 1931 to 1937, Rykov served as People's Commissar of Communications on the council he formerly chaired. In February 1937 at a meeting of the Central Committee, he was arrested with Nikolai Bukharin. In March 1938, both were found guilty of treason and executed.

Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was born on 25 February 1881 in Saratov, Russia. His parents were ethnic Russian peasants from the village of Kukarka (located in the province Vyatka). Alexei's father, Ivan Illych Rykov, a farmer whose work had led the family to settle in Saratov died in 1889 from cholera while working in Merv. His widowed stepmother could not care for him, so he was cared for by his older sister, Klavdiya Ivanovna Rykova, an officeworker for the Ryazan-Uralsk railroad. In 1892 he began his first year of middle school in Saratov. An outstanding student, he started high school at age 13. He excelled in mathematics, physics and the natural sciences. At 15 Rykov stopped attending church and confession, and renounced his faith. He graduated from high school in 1900 and enrolled at the University of Kazan to study law, which he did not complete.

Rykov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1898 and supported its Bolshevik faction when the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at its Second Congress in 1903. He worked as a Bolshevik agent in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and played an active role in the Russian Revolution of 1905. He was elected a member of the Party's Central Committee at its 3rd Congress (boycotted by the Mensheviks) in London in 1905 and its 4th Congress in Stockholm in 1906. He was elected candidate (non-voting) member of the Central Committee at the 5th Congress in London.

Initially supportive of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin in the 1908–09 struggle with Alexander Bogdanov for the leadership of the Bolshevik faction, Rykov voted to expel the latter at the June 1909 mini-conference in Paris. He spent 1910–11 exiled in France, and in 1912 expressed reproach towards Lenin's proposal that the Bolsheviks become an independent party. The dispute was interrupted by Rykov's exile to Siberia for revolutionary activity.

Rykov returned from Siberia after the February Revolution of 1917 and re-joined the Bolsheviks, although he remained skeptical of their more radical inclinations. He became a member of the Petrograd Soviet and the Moscow Soviet. At the 6th Congress of the Bolshevik Party in July–August 1917 he was elected to the Central Committee. During the October Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee in Moscow.

After the revolution, Rykov was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. On 29 October 1917 (Old Style), immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power, the executive committee of the national railroad labor union, Vikzhel, threatened a national strike unless the Bolsheviks shared power with other socialist parties and dropped Lenin and Leon Trotsky from the government. Grigori Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and their allies in the Bolshevik Central Committee argued that the Bolsheviks had no choice but to start negotiations since a railroad strike would cripple their government's ability to fight the forces that were still loyal to the overthrown Provisional Government. Although Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Rykov briefly had the support of a Central Committee majority and negotiations were started, a quick collapse of the anti-Bolshevik forces outside Petrograd allowed Lenin and Trotsky to convince the Central Committee to abandon the negotiating process. In response Rykov, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Vladimir Milyutin, and Victor Nogin resigned from the Central Committee and from the government on 17 November 1917 .