Research topic: Aleksey Ivanovich Rykov

Aleksey Ivanovich Rykov , 1881-1938, Russian revolutionary and Communist leader. A Bolshevik, he became commissar for the interior after the October Revolution of 1917 and a member of the Politburo in 1922. On Lenin's death (1924) he succeeded as chairman of the council of commissars (i.e., premier of the USSR). He joined Stalin in the 1926 polemical struggle which saw the humbling of Zinoviev and Kamenev and the exile of Trotsky . Rykov was in turn accused (1929) of "rightist deviation" when Stalin switched camps and advocated a drastic collectivization program, which Rykov had... Read more