Alexei Rykov
Alexei Rykov | |
---|---|
Алексей Рыков | |
17th Central Committee | |
In office 10 February 1934 – 12 October 1937 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Alexei Ivanovich Rykov 25 February 1881 RSDLP (Bolsheviks) (1903–1918) Russian Communist Party (1918–1937) |
Children | Natalia Alekseevna Rykova (1917–2010)[1] |
Signature | |
Alexei Ivanovich Rykov
Rykov joined the
During the
After Lenin was incapacitated by his third stroke in March 1923 Rykov, along with Lev Kamenev, was elected by the Sovnarkom to serve as deputy chairman to Lenin. While both Rykov and Kamenev were Lenin's deputies, Kamenev was the acting premier of the Soviet Union.
Lenin died from a fourth stroke in January 1924, and in February, Rykov was chosen by the Council of People's Commissars as premier of both the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and of the Soviet Union, which he served as until May 1929 and December 1930, respectively.[2] In December 1930 he was removed from the Politburo.[2]
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.[2] In March 1938, both were found guilty of treason and executed.[2]
Biography
Early life (1881–1900)
Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was born on 25 February 1881 in
Pre-Revolution political activity (1898–1917)
Rykov joined the
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.[2] The dispute was interrupted by Rykov's exile to Siberia for revolutionary activity.
Revolution and Civil War (1917–1920)
Rykov returned from Siberia after the
After the revolution, Rykov was appointed
On 3 April 1918 Rykov was appointed Chairman of the
Post-Civil War and rise to leadership (1920–1927)
Once the Bolsheviks emerged victorious in the civil war, Rykov resigned his Supreme Council of National Economy post on 28 May 1921.[3] On 26 May 1921, he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense of the Russian SFSR under Lenin. With Lenin increasingly sidelined by ill health, Rykov became his deputy at the Sovnarkom (Council of People's Commissars) on 29 December. Rykov joined the ruling Politburo on 3 April 1922, after the 11th Party Congress. A government reorganization in the wake of the formation of the Soviet Union in December 1922 resulted in Rykov's appointment as Chairman of the USSR Supreme Council of National Economy and Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of People's Commissars on 6 July 1923.
After Lenin's death on 21 January 1924 Rykov gave up his position as Chairman of the USSR Supreme Council of National Economy and became
According to Polish historian, Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, Rykov was placed in the position of Chairman of the Soviet Union due to support from Stalin as part of a wider effort to build an alliance in the Politburo. Dziewanowski argued that Trotsky rather than Rykov would have been the natural successor to Lenin had he accepted the position of Vice Chairman.[4]
Along with Nikolai Bukharin and Mikhail Tomsky, Rykov led the moderate wing of the Communist Party in the 1920s, promoting a partial restoration of the market economy under NEP policies. The moderates supported Joseph Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev against Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition in 1923–24. After Trotsky's defeat and Stalin's break with Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1925, Rykov, Bukharin and Tomsky supported Stalin against the United Opposition of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1926–27. After Kamenev voiced opposition to Stalin at the 14th Party Congress in December 1925, he lost his position as Chairman of the Soviet Council of Labor and Defense—which he had assumed from Lenin following Lenin's death—and was replaced by Rykov on 19 January 1926.
Under his leadership vodka was heavily taxed, and became known as "Rykovka". Some of his political opponents claimed that he was a heavy drinker,[5] but in reality he was an abstainer.[6]
Rise of Stalin and demise (1927–1938)
Rykov's Premiership encompassed drastic change in the power structure of the Soviet Union. From 1924 to 1930 the role of the
On 30 May 1931, Rykov was appointed
Trial and death
Expecting the worst, Rykov nearly decided to follow the example of his close friend Mikhail Tomsky and preempt arrest by committing suicide, but was convinced otherwise by his family.
Family
Rykov's wife, Nina Semyonova, née Marshak, was arrested in 1937.[9] Yevgenia Ginzburg, who was also arrested in 1937, recorded being approached inside Butyrka prison by "a woman of about 55, with an expression of acute suffering on her face" who demanded: "Have they tried them yet? They've shot them, haven't they?" Ginzburg was told this was Rykov's wife, vainly seeking news of her husband.[10] Nina Rykov was shot on 4 March 1938.[11]
Their daughter Natalya, born 1916, worked for the NKVD as a teacher until her father's arrest, when she was sent into administrative exile in Tomsk, where she was arrested on 1 March 1938 and sentenced to eight years in the gulag for 'anti-soviet agitation'. On completing her sentence in 1946, she was sentenced to five years exile in East Kazakhstan, but before that had expired, she was arrested again and exiled to the Yenisey region of Krasnoyarsk.[11] In exile, she underwent two operations for cancer,[12] could not work, and had to depend on her husband, Walter Perli (1907–1961), a former officer in the Estonian army, arrested during the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940, whom she married in exile in June 1949.[11] Perli, who worked as an accountant, also financially supported Nina Rykova's elderly sister, Yelena Tolmacheva, until he was admitted to hospital with tuberculosis.[12] She was released in September 1954, after 16 years prison and exile.
Rehabilitation
The
See also
Footnotes
Notes
- ^ Russian: Алексей Иванович Рыков
Citations
- ^ "Kremlin Children". Archived from the original on 2011-10-04. Retrieved 2011-06-24.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q "Aleksey Ivanovich Rykov biography—Archontology".
- ISBN 0-521-62178-Xp. 180.
- ISBN 978-0-13-097852-3.
- YouTube
- ^ Russian documentary series "The Kremlin's Children": Natal'ya Rykova (a fragment of his attitude to alcohol starts in 11:50)
- ^ a b
Rappaport, Helen (1999). "Aleksey Ivanovich Rykov". Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion. ABC-CLIO. p. 238. ISBN 9781576070840.
- ^ Rykov, Alexei. "Rykov's last plea". Library of Congress. Library of Congress. Retrieved 4 October 2016.
- ^ "Рыкова Алексей Иванович (1881–1938)". Мемориальный музей "следстдвенная тюрьма НКВД". Retrieved 13 January 2023.
- ^ Ginzburg, Evgenia S. (1968). Into the Whirlwind. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. p. 120.
- ^ a b c "Рыкова Наталья Алексеевна (1916)". Октрытый список (Open List). Retrieved 13 January 2023.
- ^ a b Rykova, Natalya. "Письмо Н.А. Рыковой Н.С. Хрущеву. 1 февраля 1954 г. (Letter from N.A.Rykova to N.S.Khrushchev 1 February 1954)". Реабилитация: как это было. Документы Президиума ЦК КПСС и другие материалы. Март 1953 — февраль 1956. Международный фонд "демократия" Moscow. Retrieved 13 January 2023.
External links
- Works by or about Alexei Rykov at Internet Archive
- Newspaper clippings about Alexei Rykov in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW