Alexei Ivanovich Rykov
Alexei Iwanowitsch Rykow ( Russian Алексей Иванович Рыков , scientific transliteration Aleksej Ivanovič Rykov ; * February 13th July / February 25th 1881 greg. In Saratow ; † March 15, 1938 in Moscow ) was a Soviet politician . From 1924 to 1930 he was chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Prime Minister of the USSR). Rykov was executed in the course of the Stalinist purges .
Life
Early activities
Rykov was the son of farmers and joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party around 1899 . There he joined the Bolsheviks in 1903 and took an active part in the Russian Revolution of 1905 .
In 1910 he broke with the Bolsheviks because of Lenin's authoritarian leadership style . After the February Revolution of 1917 , he became a leading member of the Moscow Soviet . He was hostile to Lenin's April theses .
Regardless of his differences with Lenin, Rykov was elected to the Presidium of the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Councils of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants' Deputies after the October Revolution in 1917.
Party and government offices
Until 1918 he was People's Commissar for Internal Affairs. He resigned this office because the government was only provided by the Bolsheviks and not by a coalition, as he had requested.
From 1918 to 1920 he was People's Commissar for the Supreme Economic Council , and from 1921 to 1924 Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars . Rykow supported the NEP . In March 1922, at the plenary session of the Moscow Soviet, he declared that it was intolerable to revert to the methods of war communism . He called for an end to the use of violence in the villages.
On April 3, 1922, he was elected a full member of the seven-member Politburo . After Lenin's death on February 2, 1924, he became chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. From 1926 he led the Council for Labor and Defense and the Science Committee.
The city of Jenakijewe in Ukraine was named after him as Rykowo between 1923 and 1936.
Rykov was instrumental in the first five-year plan . He demanded that socialism should respect the goods-money relationship, and that the economic independence of producers should not be restricted.
descent
In the internal disputes, he initially supported Stalin against Trotsky . Together with Bukharin and Tomski , however, from the beginning of 1928 he had emphatically opposed Stalin's ever harsher crackdown on " kulak " and the collectivization campaign, and advocated a moderate agricultural policy.
In the course of 1928, Stalin was gradually able to get the majority of the Politburo on his side. When Bukharin sharply reiterated his views in Pravda on September 30, 1928, in the article Notes of an Economist , the Politburo condemned this article, with Rykov also making concessions on several points.
Nevertheless, he, who had accused Stalin of economic incompetence, was classified as one of the leaders of the right-wing opposition so dubbed by Stalin from April 1929 on. In the April and November plenary sessions of the Central Committee and the Central Committee, Stalin made a distinction between a Central Committee line and a line of the Bukharin group. Like Bukharin, Rykov was removed from his post, but remained in the Politburo.
When Bukharin was expelled from the Politburo on November 17, 1929, Rykov, Bukharin and Tomski signed a letter to the Central Committee just a week later in which the undersigned admitted their "mistakes" and declared that they in turn would now fight a decisive fight against everyone Deviations from the general line of the party lead.
Although portrayed in the press as “accomplices of the kulaks”, the 16th party congress in June / July 1930 elected the three to the Central Committee. In December 1930 Rykov was expelled from the Politburo and replaced by Molotov as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. He then worked from 1931 to 1936 as the People's Commissar for Post and Telecommunications.
At the 17th party congress in January / February 1934, the “party congress of the victors”, he praised Stalin's special abilities, who “excelled himself as leader and organizer of our victories from the very beginning with great strength” and “immediately in that period and immediately stood out from the entire party leadership at the time. "
The end
In 1937 Rykov got caught up in the Stalinist purges . At the February-March plenary session in 1937, a resolution "on the Bukharin and Rykov case" was passed. A commission of 60 Central Committee members headed by Mikojan was supposed to investigate the case. This found that Bukharin and Rykov had known of acts of sabotage and terrorism and had helped.
On February 27, the two were summoned to the plenum of the Central Committee and asked to confess their participation in anti-state actions. A motion prepared by Jeschow was then voted to exclude the two as candidates from the Central Committee and the party and then to bring them to a military court and to have them shot. When the majority voted for the expulsion but against the shooting, Stalin proposed that the matter be turned over to the NKVD for investigation , which was unanimously approved. Immediately thereafter, Bukharin and Rykov were arrested and a resolution was passed reinforcing the allegations against the two.
On March 7, 1937, Rykov and Bukharin were expelled as candidates from the Central Committee and the WKP (B). In 1938, in the third of the Moscow trials , the “Trial of 21”, they were charged with having prepared a coup with Trotsky . Rykov, like the co-defendants, confessed to all of the acts he was accused of and stated: “I want those who have not yet been exposed and have not yet disarmed to do so immediately and openly. I want you to convince yourself of the inevitability of disarming yourself using my example. ”Rykov was found guilty and executed in Moscow's Lubyanka .
In 1988 he was legally and politically rehabilitated.
literature
- "Non-persons". Who were they really? Bukharin, Rykov, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-320-01547-8
- Dimitri Volkogonov : Stalin. Triumph and tragedy. A political portrait . From the Russian by Vesna Jovanoska, Econ Verlag Düsseldorf, 1989, 3rd edition 1996; ISBN 3-430-19847-X
Web links
- Literature by and about Alexei Iwanowitsch Rykow in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about Alexei Iwanowitsch Rykow in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
- Steffen Dietzsch: Bukharin, Nikolai Iwanowitsch, Karl Radek et al. , in: Kurt Groenewold , Alexander Ignor, Arnd Koch (Eds.): Lexicon of Political Criminal Trials , Online, as of September 2015
Individual evidence
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
|
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin |
Soviet head of government 1924–1930 |
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rykov, Alexei Ivanovich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Алексей Иванович Рыков |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | soviet politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 25, 1881 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Saratov |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 15, 1938 |
| Place of death | Moscow |