Early life (1881–1900) Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was born on 25 February 1881 in
Saratov,
Russia. 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
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and, simultaneously, of the Sovnarkom of the
RSFSR, on 2 February 1924. '' 14 July 1924 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, but in reality he was an abstainer.
Rise of Stalin and demise (1927–1938) and
Klim Voroshilov, February 1928. Rykov's Premiership encompassed drastic change in the power structure of the Soviet Union. From 1924 to 1930 the role of the
Communist Party—informally led by Stalin who, as
General Secretary, controlled Party membership—increasingly usurped powers from the legitimate governmental structures. Although an exact date cannot be given for
Stalin's rise to power, the
United Opposition—which consisted of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Trotsky—was defeated and its followers were expelled from the Party by December 1927. After the defeat of the United Opposition, Stalin adopted more radical policies and came into conflict with the moderate wing of the party. The two factions maneuvered behind the scenes throughout 1928. In February–April 1929 the conflict came to a head and the moderates, branded the
Right Opposition, or "Rightists", were defeated and forced to "admit their mistakes" in November 1929. Rykov lost his position as Premier of the Russian SFSR to
Sergei Syrtsov on 18 May 1929, but retained his other two posts. On 19 December 1930, after admitting another round of "mistakes", he was replaced by
Vyacheslav Molotov as both Soviet Premier and Chairman of the
Council of Labor and Defense. Two days later, Rykov was expelled from the
Politburo, taking with him any chance of political advancement. As Stalin's
Great Purge intensified in early 1937, Rykov and Bukharin were expelled from the Communist Party and arrested at the February–March 1937 meeting of the Central Committee on 27 February. On 13 March 1938, at the
Trial of the Twenty-One, Rykov, Bukharin,
Nikolay Krestinsky,
Christian Rakovsky,
Genrikh Yagoda, and sixteen other Soviet officials were found guilty of treason (having plotted with Trotsky against Stalin) and sentenced to death by the
Military Collegium. Rykov wrote a letter to the collegium requesting clemency but failed to get them to overturn the verdict. Rykov was executed by firing squad on March 14, 1938, after being found guilty of treason and other charges.
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. Nina Rykov was shot on 4 March 1938. 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. 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. Perli, who worked as an accountant, also financially supported Nina Rykova's elderly sister, Yelena Tolmacheva, until he was admitted to hospital with tuberculosis. She was released in September 1954, after 16 years prison and exile.
Rehabilitation The
Soviet government annulled the verdict in 1988 and
rehabilitated him during the
perestroika. Rykov was then reinstated in the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. ==See also==