Rykov short biography. The rise and fall of Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Rykov. Commissioner of the Interior
On February 2, 1924, professional revolutionary Alexei Rykov became chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. It should be noted that the Soviet Prime Minister received a high position a few days before the celebration of his birth. Few now remember that at that time Rykov was not inferior to Trotsky and Stalin in popularity among the Bolsheviks and the population. Apparently, therefore, Alexei Ivanovich was repressed in 1937. "RG" collected Interesting Facts from the biography of the Soviet premier.
Childhood
Alexey Rykov was born on February 13, 1881 in Saratov. His father - a native of the Kukarka settlement of the Vyatka province, Ivan Rykov was engaged in agriculture, then trade. In 1889 he went to work in Central Asia, where he died of cholera, leaving a family of six without a livelihood. Therefore, the childhood of the future prime minister passed in great need. While still studying at the gymnasium, Rykov, from the age of 13, he himself earned a living by private lessons. From the fourth grade, he stopped attending church and confessing, which caused grief and reproaches from the gymnasium authorities, despite this, who appreciated Rykov for his brilliant academic success. It was the "four for behavior", then a 12-point grading system, that deprived Rykov of the opportunity to enter the capital's universities. Therefore, he was forced to higher education in Kazan.
Links and steps
Even in the gymnasium, Rykov became interested in revolutionary ideas, in connection with which he had trouble with the police. In Kazan, he leads working circles. After a nine-month stay in a Kazan prison, Alexei Rykov was sent to Saratov under police supervision. On May 1, 1902, Rykov took part in organizing the May Day demonstration, during which he was severely beaten by the Black Hundreds. After that, the future prime minister is sent to the Arkhangelsk province, where he works as a reporter for the Arkhangelsk newspaper. Until 1917, Rykov was in an illegal position, was in exile, met Lenin in Geneva, and was arrested nine times. He met the February Revolution, which freed him, in the Narym Territory.
Man from Smolny
In 1917, Alexei Rykov became one of the organizers October revolution. During the storming of the Winter Palace, he was in Smolny. When the Council of People's Commissars was created, he became a member of it as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs (Vnudel). Although Rykov stayed in this position for only nine days, he managed to sign the decree "On the Workers' Militia". Since then, on November 10, law enforcement officers celebrate their professional holiday. In 1918, Rykov became the head of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh). Under his leadership, the nationalization of industry was carried out and a state monopoly was created in the distribution of manufactured goods. In his position, Chusosnabarm - "extraordinary authorized service station for the supply of the Red Army and Navy" - was responsible for providing the Red Army with food and uniforms.
Alcohol Premier
As Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. In December 1924, he signed a decree on the abolition of Prohibition, which had been in force since the beginning of the First World War. This was done to fill the state budget. The first Soviet vodka arrived on the shelves - popularly nicknamed "rykovka", after the name of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. On this occasion, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote in his diary: “An event in Moscow - they released 30 ° vodka, which the public rightly called “rykovka”. It differs from aqua regia in that it is ten degrees weaker, worse in taste and four times more expensive."
However, as a statesman of the Soviet era, Rykov participated in internal party struggle for power. After Lenin's death, he actively supported Stalin in the struggle against Trotsky, and later against Zinoviev and Kamenev. At the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1927, he said: "I am handing over the broom to Comrade Stalin, let him sweep our enemies with it." In 1928-1929, he opposed the curtailment of the NEP, the forcing of industrialization and collectivization, which was declared a "right deviation" in the CPSU (b). Rykov repented and on February 1, 1930, together with Kalinin and Yenukidze, signed a resolution "On measures to strengthen the socialist reorganization of agriculture in areas of complete collectivization and to combat the kulaks." This decision became the basis for mass dispossession of kulaks in the countryside.
Opal and rehabilitation
On December 19, 1930, Alexei Rykov was removed from the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, and two months later he began to lead the People's Commissariat of Communications. Five years later he was expelled from the party and arrested on February 27, 1937. He was kept in the Lubyanka prison. During interrogation, he pleaded guilty. In his last speech, he declared: "I want those who have not yet been exposed and disarmed to do so immediately and openly." On March 13, 1938 he was sentenced to death and on March 15 he was shot at the Kommunarsky firing range. In 1988, Alexei Rykov was fully rehabilitated by the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR and reinstated in the CPSU.
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Rykov Alexey Ivanovich - (1881-1938), Soviet party and statesman.
Born February 13, 1881 in Saratov in a peasant family. He graduated from the Saratov classical gymnasium. While still at the gymnasium, he began to study K. Marx's Capital. He joined the RSDLP in 1898, actively engaged in party work in illegal circles. He studied at Kazan University at the Faculty of Law in 1900-1901 (he was expelled for participating in revolutionary movement), during his studies he entered the local committee of the Social Democratic Party, at the same time he worked in the student committee.
He, as a leader and as an organizer of our victories, showed himself with the greatest strength from the very first time / (about Stalin)
Rykov Alexey Ivanovich
In 1901 he was arrested for 9 months, then exiled to Saratov, where in 1902 he became one of the organizers of the May Day demonstration. In 1903 he went underground and became a professional revolutionary. Went through 8 arrests. In the same year, in Geneva, he first met with V.I. Lenin. Two months later, with an illegal passport, he returned to Russia again and began working in the Northern Committee of the Social Democratic Party (Yaroslavl and Kostroma provinces), then in its Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow committees. In March 1905 he was elected a delegate to the 3rd Congress of the Bolshevik Party in London. Since then, he has been a member of the Central Committee, first of the RSDLP (b), and then of the CPSU (b). After the 3rd Congress, he headed the St. Petersburg Committee.
In 1917 he became one of the organizers of the October Revolution, although he opposed Lenin's April Theses, believing that for socialist revolution in Russia there are no objective prerequisites. When the Council of People's Commissars was created, he became a member of it as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs (Vnudel). In 1918 - head of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh). 1921-1923 - Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, since 1923 he served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. After the death of Lenin, the first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, he was approved for the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the RSFSR (February 2, 1924). Since 1926, he simultaneously led the Council of Labor and Defense. Since 1919 - member of the Politburo of the Central Committee.
One of the first Rykov saw a serious danger to our country in fascism raising its head in a number of European countries. At the Osoviahim congress in 1927, he emphasized that the capitalist countries of Europe were pursuing a short-sighted policy, justifying fascism as a manifestation of the defense of national identity.
In 1928-1929 Rykov opposed the curtailment of the NEP, the forcing of industrialization and collectivization. He considered the main meaning of the NEP - the formation of a free market, stimulating the rise of not only agriculture, but also industry. He emphasized the need to implement the NEP on the basis of cooperation between workers and peasants, to improve the real conditions for the existence of working people. He believed that several decades of development of Soviet society would be required to complete this task. Only as a result of such development will "direct socialist construction" become possible. In 1929, at the April Plenum of the Central Committee, he was accused of "right deviation", he admitted his mistakes and declared that he would wage "a resolute struggle against all deviations from the general line of the party and, above all, against the right deviation."
For Rykov, the inevitability of leaving the post of head of government became more and more obvious. On December 20, 1930, the newspapers published a resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR on his release from the duties of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR. V.M. Molotov was appointed successor. Further, the joint plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks released Rykov from his duties as a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee. March 30, 1931 he was appointed People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs. In March 1937 he was arrested in the case of the "anti-Soviet bloc of Rights and Trotskyists." In 1938 he was shot by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. Rehabilitated in 1988.
RYKOV Alexey Ivanovich
(02/13/1881 - 03/15/1938). Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) - VKP(b) from 04/03/1922 to 12/21/1930 Member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) from 04/05/1920 to 05/23/1924 Member of the Party Central Committee in 1905 - 1907 , 1917 - 1918, 1920 - 1934 Candidate member of the Central Committee of the party in 1907 - 1912, 1934 - 1937. Party member since 1898
Born in Saratov in the family of a small merchant. Russian. His father, a peasant in the Vyatka province, died in 1890 of cholera, four years earlier his mother had died. He graduated from the 2nd classical gymnasium in Saratov. In 1900 he entered Faculty of Law Kazan University, from where he was expelled in March 1901 due to his arrest. Unfinished higher education. Illegal revolutionary activity led in the Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Kostroma provinces, in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa and other cities. In 1903 he met V. I. Lenin. Actively participated in the revolution of 1905-1907. In 1910 - 1911. in exile in France. Repeatedly arrested, exiled. Before the revolution, he often opposed V.I. Lenin. The February Revolution of 1917 freed him from his last (Narym) exile. He did not support the Leninist program of the socialist revolution in Russia, he believed that there were no conditions for it in the country, the impetus should be given from the industrially developed West. From May 1917 he was a member of the presidium, comrade (deputy) chairman of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies. From October 1917 he was a member of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet. People's Commissar for internal affairs in the first Soviet government, approved on October 26 (November 8), 1917 by the II Congress of Soviets. This post was first offered by V. I. Lenin to L. D. Trotsky, but he refused, saying that “it is impossible to give such a trump card into the hands of our enemies ... it will be much better if there is not a single Jew in the first revolutionary Soviet government” . On October 28 (November 10), 1917, he signed a decree on the organization of a workers' militia, that is, he stood at the origins of the birth of the Police Day holiday, which is still celebrated today. He only held this post for nine days. Together with L. B. Kamenev, G. E. Zinoviev and others, he insisted on joining the government of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. The Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) condemned their position and demanded that the idea of a coalition government be abandoned. 04 (17) 11/1917, in protest, A. I. Rykov, L. B. Kamenev, G. E. Zinoviev and two other party leaders left the Central Committee of the RSDR (b). At the same time, he resigned from the powers of the people's commissar and, together with four of his associates, left the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR. V. I. Lenin regarded their act as desertion. Later, A.I. Rykov condemned his decision, calling it impulsive. Since November 1917 in Moscow, he dealt with the issues of supplying the city with food. On November 29 (December 12), 1917, he applied for “return admission to the Central Committee”, but, at the insistence of V. I. Lenin, received a negative answer. Member of the Constituent Assembly. From February 15, 1918, he was a member of the collegium of the People's Commissariat for Food, at the same time from March of that year, the Commissar of Food of the Central Industrial Region, a member of the Moscow Regional Council of People's Commissars. From 04/03/1918 to 05/26/1921 - Chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh) of the RSFSR. In July 1919 - August 1921 he was an extraordinary commissioner of the Council of Labor and Defense for the supply of the Red Army and Navy. One of the founders of the "war communism" system. From May 26, 1921, for seven months, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense of the RSFSR. 06/08/1921 for the first time presided as a deputy of V.I. Lenin at a meeting of the STO, 07/05/1921 at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars. Since December 29, 1921, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR. During his lifetime, V. I. Lenin often criticized him weak sides . In one of the speeches, he said that Soviet leaders liked to travel abroad for treatment. Traveled and A. I. Rykov. And V. I. Lenin hopes that, having performed the operation, the German doctors managed to cut out everything negative in the character of A. I. Rykov and, leaving it to them as a memory, A. I. Rykov finally returned free of them. The words of V. I. Lenin caused laughter in the hall. In his "testament" V. I. Lenin A. I. Rykov did not even remember. On December 12, 1922, on his last working day in the Kremlin office, V. I. Lenin had a two-hour conversation with him and his two other deputies, L. B. Kamenev and A. D. Tsyurupa, about the distribution of duties between them. The conversation was left unfinished. On December 13, 1922, V. I. Lenin, who stopped working due to illness, sent a letter to his deputies, in which he suggested that when distributing cases, take into account that for chairmanship, control over the correct wording of documents, “Comrade Kamenev is more suitable, while the functions purely administrative ones are characteristic of Tsyurupa and Rykov ”(Lenin V.I. Poln. sobr. soch. T. 45. P. 331). In July 1923 - February 1924, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and STO of the USSR, simultaneously from July 1923 Chairman of the Supreme Economic Council of the USSR, remaining Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR. From February 2, 1924 to December 1930, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR (until 1929). He replaced the deceased V. I. Lenin in this post. At the same time, in January 1926 - December 1930, Chairman of the STO of the USSR. According to V. M. Molotov, after the death of V. I. Lenin, when the question arose of whom to appoint the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, out of his three deputies (A. D. Tsyurupa, A. I. Rykov, L. B. Kamenev) I. V. Stalin preferred A. I. Rykov: “... because although he was in favor of including the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in the government, he did not openly oppose the October Revolution, like Kamenev. In addition, the fact that a Russian was at the head of the government also played a role. At that time, Jews occupied many leadership positions, although they constituted a low percentage of the country's population ”(Chuev F.I. Molotov. M., 1999. P. 257). According to the tradition that came from V. I. Lenin, he also chaired the Plenums of the Central Committee of the party. In December 1924, vodka called "rykovka" went on sale. It had a fortress of 30 degrees, cost 1 r. 75 kop. According to contemporaries, it was ten degrees weaker than the royal one, worse in taste and four times more expensive. He drank a lot, was treated in Germany for drunkenness. According to the memoirs of V. M. Molotov, A. I. Rykov always had a bottle of Starkey: “‘‘Rykovskaya’’ vodka was * this he was famous for. Stuttered. On 10/08/1930, he signed an order of the Council of People's Commissars on the removal of bells from churches in connection with the need to obtain 20 thousand tons of metal for minting small coins. In the autumn of 1925, at a meeting in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, dedicated to the discussion around the book of G. E. Zinoviev, he sharply opposed him and his group, stating that they were splitters, undermining the unity of the party and its leadership, and that the sooner they left from the party, the better. However, his views soon changed. He believed that I. V. Stalin departed from Lenin's teachings on the peasant question, opposed his line of strengthening the command-administrative system, the collectivization of agriculture, which served as the basis for accusations of right deviation. In March 1931 - September 1936, the People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs (since January 1932 communications) of the USSR. He was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of the 1st - 7th convocations. At the February-March (1937) Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he was expelled from the Central Committee and from the party. He envied the determination of MP Tomsky, who committed suicide, but did not find the strength to follow his example. On February 27, 1937, he was arrested and spent 13 months under investigation. On March 2, 1938, together with N.I. Bukharin and other 19 figures removed from high party and government posts, he appeared as one of the main defendants at an open trial held in the October Hall of the House of Unions. He fully admitted his guilt in preparing a coup d'état, organizing kulak uprisings and terrorist cells. 03/13/1938 by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR under Art. 58-1 "a", 58-2, 58-7, 58-8, 58-9, 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR sentenced to the highest measure of criminal punishment, with confiscation of all property belonging to him personally. 03/15/1938 was shot. On April 13, 1956, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a resolution "On the study of the materials of open trials in the case of Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky and others." On December 10, 1956, the commission reported that there were no grounds for reviewing the cases against these persons, “because for many years they led the anti-Soviet struggle against the construction of socialism in the USSR.” On January 21, 1988, the Prosecutor General of the USSR A. M. Rekunkov, in the exercise of supervision, filed a protest in the case of persons accused in 1938 of right deviation. “There is no evidence in the case that N. I. Bukharin, A. I. Rykov and others, on the instructions of hostile states, created a conspiratorial group, referred to in the indictment and verdict as the “right-wing Trotskyist bloc”, which set as its goal espionage in favor of foreign states sabotage, sabotage, terror, undermining the military power of the USSR, provoking a military attack on the USSR, dismembering the USSR in favor of foreign states, overthrowing the existing socialist social and state system in the USSR and restoring capitalism. The "terrorist activity" of A. I. Rykov against I. V. Stalin, V. M. Molotov, L. M. Kaganovich, K. E. Voroshilov is called far-fetched and absurd. By the decision of the Supreme Court of the USSR of February 4, 1988, the sentence against him was canceled, the case was dismissed due to the lack of corpus delicti. In June of the same year, by decision of the CPC under the Central Committee of the CPSU, he was reinstated in the party.
February 13, 1881 - March 15, 1938
Soviet politician and statesman, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs
Childhood and youth
Born in the family of a peasant, a migrant from the settlement of Kukarka, Vyatka province, Yaransky district, Ivan Ilyich Rykov. His father was engaged in agriculture, then trade in Saratov. In 1889, Rykov's father went to work in Merv, where he died of cholera, leaving a family of 6, consisting of children from his first and second marriages.
Rykov's childhood passed in need. The stepmother could only feed her own children. Elder sister Claudia Ivanovna Rykova, who served in the office of the Ryazan-Ural railway and engaged in private lessons, took the boy into her care and helped him enter the Saratov 1st classical gymnasium in 1892. Later, when the 13-year-old Rykov was transferred to the senior classes of the gymnasium, he himself earned money by private lessons. Rykov's favorite subjects in his gymnasium years were mathematics, physics and the natural sciences.
In the 4th grade of the gymnasium, at the age of 15, Rykov stopped attending church and confessing, which caused grief and reproaches from the gymnasium authorities, despite this, who appreciated Rykov for his brilliant academic success.
revolutionary activity
Even in the gymnasium, Rykov became interested in revolutionary ideas, and therefore had trouble with the police. Yes, the day before final exams a search was carried out in the Rykovs' house in order to search for illegal literature. In the years of Rykov's youth, Saratov was an "exiled city", a place where people were exiled for political views. There were several revolutionary circles in the city, in which Rykov took an active part. A well-known leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party Nikolay Ivanovich Rakitnikov had a significant influence on Rykov during these years. Acquaintance with the old Narodnaya Volya Valerian Balmashev prompted Rykov to study the peasant movement. With Balmashev's son Stepan, who killed the Minister of the Interior Sipyagin in 1902, Rykov was on friendly terms.
The revolutionary views of Rykov became the reason for the "four" for behavior in the certificate. The latter circumstance closed the doors to the metropolitan universities for Alexei Ivanovich and he had to go to continue his education in Kazan, where in 1900 he entered the law faculty of Kazan University.
In the same year, 19-year-old student Rykov immediately became a member of the local committee of the RSDLP (Kazan Social Democratic Group). In Kazan, he leads working circles, while simultaneously working in the student committee. In March 1901, the workers' and students' social democratic organizations were crushed. After a 9-month stay in a Kazan prison, Rykov was sent to Saratov under police supervision.
In Saratov, Rykov participates in an attempt to create a common revolutionary organization of social democrats and social revolutionaries. But after the formation of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, this organization disintegrated. May 1, 1902 Rykov participates in the organization of the May Day demonstration in Saratov. The demonstration was dispersed by the police and the Black Hundreds. Rykov himself miraculously escaped reprisal. Beaten and covered in blood, he fled from the gendarmes pursuing him.
Some time later, in connection with the Kazan case, a sentence arrived from the police department about Rykov's exile to the Arkhangelsk province. Alexei Ivanovich decides to go underground.
Conducted party work in
The life of this man can be called a typical example of the difficult fate of a professional revolutionary who, in the name of his idea, under conditions tsarist Russia many times he was arrested and exiled, endured hardship and deprivation, experienced persecution and forced emigration. But at the same time, his fate turned out to be much more tragic in Soviet era, when Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was declared an enemy of the very people for whose happiness he fought on the barricades and spent years in the most terrible prison cells (Fig. 1).
Prisoner of the tsarist regime
He was born on February 13 (according to the new style on February 25), 1881 in Saratov, in the family of a merchant, a migrant from the Kukarka settlement of the Vyatka province, Ivan Ilyich Rykov. In 1898, Rykov became a member of the RSDLP, and a year later he entered the law faculty of Kazan University, from where he was expelled from the third year due to his participation in student unrest. Subsequently, for belonging to the RSDLP (b), he was repeatedly arrested and exiled, but then he was an active participant in the events of the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907.
After his next arrest in 1908, Rykov was sentenced to exile in Samara under open police supervision for a period of one year. He arrived at the place of serving his sentence on August 12, 1908. Already on the second after his arrival, Rykov filed a petition with the office of the Samara governor Vladimir Yakunin for permission to travel abroad "due to the need to treat catarrh of the throat and progressive deafness." However, in response to this letter, the exile received a refusal. Then, with the assistance of party comrades, Rykov was soon able to rent a private apartment on Sadovaya Street and got a job as a clerk to one of the local shopkeepers.
During his stay in Samara, in total, he had to change several places of residence and no less number of offices with private traders, from where he was fired, as a rule, for indiscipline and for constant lateness to work. And in recently opened archival documents It is stated that the exiled Aleksey Rykov repeatedly violated the regime of public supervision, not being at the police station on time for a mark, for which he was subjected to administrative imprisonment in the Samara provincial prison for up to 5 days. In this regard, now State Archive Samara region stores materials on the administrative prisoner Rykov with his photographs and fingerprints (Fig. 2-5).
Later, during his exile in Samara, Rykov several times asked the local authorities for permission to travel abroad to undergo a course of treatment. The answers to his letters each time came negative, after which the persistent exile sent the same request to the Minister of the Interior Russian Empire. To his surprise, in February 1909, his request was finally granted. In the official paper received from the capital, it was indicated that "now there are no obstacles for the departure of Alexei Ivanov Rykov to Switzerland."
However, after this answer, the exile had to spend another month in Samara - until the moment when a message came from the office of the Samara governor that here "permission was received from the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the early termination of the exile of Alexei Ivanov Rykov." Two days later, the former exile left Samara by train - first to Moscow, and then through Pskov to Germany and Switzerland.
On the run across Russian expanses
Although Rykov was elected a member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) at the III and IV congresses of the Social Democratic Party, during his next emigration he severed all relations with the Bolsheviks, because he did not agree with Lenin on the issue of party unity. As a result, in 1912, at the Prague Conference, Rykov was no longer nominated to the Central Committee. He returned to Russia, where he was soon arrested again and exiled for four years to Siberia, in the Tomsk province. The convict arrived at the place of serving his sentence at the beginning of 1913. However, life in the wilderness of the taiga did not appeal to the active Rykov, and he again fled from this exile.
As it soon became clear, the further path of the illegal revolutionary from here again lay on the banks of the Volga. In December 1914, a certain citizen came into the field of view of the agents of the Samara provincial gendarme department, who was very active in spreading anti-state ideas, and according to the documents he was listed as a peasant of the Ufa province, Evgraf Bychkov. Only after the arrest of the suspected subject did the gendarmes manage to establish that this fake name was hiding the fugitive exile Alexei Rykov, who five years earlier had already managed to visit the Samara provincial prison more than once. This time, the escapee spent two months in the local cell, after which he was sent back to Siberia in the Narymsk exile in the Stolypin carriage, where Rykov was to spend not only the unfinished two years, but also an additional three months as punishment for escaping.
This time, Rykov managed to return to the European Russian provinces after February Revolution. In May 1917, he reached Moscow, where he was immediately elected a member of the Presidium of the Moscow City Council. His active work in the city parliament did not go unnoticed, and therefore, soon after the October Revolution, Rykov was appointed People's Commissar for internal affairs in the first Soviet government. However, he stayed in this post for only a week (from October 27 to November 4, 1917), after which he resigned along with Lev Kamenev in protest against the refusal of the Bolsheviks to form a coalition government along with other parties.
Sentenced to death
Despite his further political disagreements with the top leadership of the state and the party, on April 3, 1918, Rykov accepted the post of Chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the RSFSR (VSNKh of the RSFSR), which he held until May 1921. Then, after the formation of the USSR, the second session of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of the 1st convocation approved him as Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (SNK of the USSR).
Already at that time he occupied a strong position in the party and Soviet leadership and actually headed the Council of People's Commissars in the absence of the paralyzed Lenin. Therefore, it seemed quite logical that on February 2, 1924, just a week and a half after the death of the leader of the world proletariat, Alexei Rykov was approved by the CEC session as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. At the same time, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR supported the practice of combining the posts of the union and republican leadership and approved Rykov as the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR.
Later, in the course of the development of his disagreements with Stalin's position on the question of the methods of building socialism, Rykov first lost the post of head Russian government(May 1929), and then the Union (December 1930). Thus, the "right opposition" in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, created by him together with Nikolai Bukharin and Mikhail Tomsky, suffered his final defeat.
After his forced resignation, Rykov was appointed People's Commissar of the USSR for Posts and Telegraphs (he held this post from January 1932). But in 1936, dark days came for him, when during the trial in the “Zinoviev-Kamenev case” charges were brought against Rykov of organizing an anti-Soviet conspiracy by him and his supporters. As a result, in February 1937 he was expelled from the party and arrested.
The former professional revolutionary, who had seen the cells of many central centers of tsarist Russia, now found himself in a cell in the main prison of the NKVD. By an evil irony of fate, he was placed here by the same government, for the victory of which in the ranks of the Communist Party, shoulder to shoulder with Lenin and Stalin, he fought for more than 20 years. In the cellars of the Lubyanka, under investigation in the case of counter-revolutionary activities, Rykov had to serve more than a year.
The third open political trial in the case of the Right-Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Bloc, in which Rykov became one of the main defendants, took place in March 1938. The defendants were charged with an anti-Soviet conspiracy, with the murder of Kirov, Kuibyshev and Gorky, with sabotage, treason and other grave crimes. Aleksey Rykov, in his last speech, stated: “I want those who have not yet been exposed and disarmed, so that they immediately and openly do this ... to help the government expose and eliminate the remnants of the rump of the counter-revolutionary organization” (Fig. 6-8).
On March 13, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced 18 defendants to death. Two days later, at the Kommunarsky training ground, the former chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Alexei Rykov, was shot along with Bukharin, Yagoda, Rozengolts, Rakovsky and other convicts.
In 1957, during a broad campaign for the rehabilitation of victims political repression an application was also submitted to the collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in relation to Alexei Rykov, but at that time it was rejected. Only in 1988, Rykov was fully rehabilitated by decision of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR. At the same time, by a special decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU, he was reinstated in the party ranks (Fig. 9).
Now few people know that in the first decade Soviet power one of the streets of Samara, by decision of the city executive committee, was named after Alexei Ivanovich Rykov. She wore it from July 15, 1925 to March 26, 1937. On that day, in connection with the case of the Right-Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Bloc, the street was renamed, receiving the name of the then head of the NKVD of the USSR Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov. However, soon after the arrest and execution of Yezhov, this name had to be changed. Since May 5, 1939, the street has been named after the famous Soviet pilot Polina Osipenko, and it is located in the Oktyabrsky district of the city of Samara.
