Early years Sergey Ivanovich Syrtsov was born in
Slavgorod,
Ekaterinoslav guberniia,
Imperial Russia (now part of
Ukraine) on 17 July 1895 (5 July Old Style) to a middle-class family of ethnic
Russian extraction. Syrtsov's father, Ivan Syrtsov, was a minor local government employee. Syrtsov attended university in
St. Petersburg at
Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University where he became politically active, jointing the
Bolshevik Party in 1913. He was released from exile following the
February Revolution of 1917, which was marked by a release of political prisoners. Syrtsov was an active participant in the
October Revolution in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the
Russian Provisional Government of
Alexander Kerensky, heading the local Military Revolutionary Committee in the city of
Rostov-on-Don during the revolt. He was appointed to the committee in charge of "
Decossackization" of the Don region in December 1918 and participated in activity to break up the rural settlements of the
Don Cossacks due to their hostility to the Bolshevik regime.
National party functionary In 1921 Syrtsov was moved to Moscow to work in the expanding state bureaucracy. Following the appointment of
Joseph Stalin as
General Secretary in April 1922, Uchraspred's work was carefully supervised by Stalin's Secretariat and a close working relationship between Syrtsov and Stalin was developed for the first time. Syrtsov became the first secretary of the Communist organization in the Urals district of
Siberia in 1926, remaining in that position until 1929. During the grain crisis of 1927–28, Stalin traveled to the region in 1928 to spur lagging grain deliveries to state procurement agencies. Syrtsov was found to be an effective ally of Moscow in the exertion of coercion against the peasantry in what came to be known as the
Ural-Siberian method of grain procurement, which was based upon use of Article 107 of the
Criminal Code of the RSFSR in charging peasants as "speculatorsa" for refusing to sell grain to state authorities despite the inadequate purchase prices being offered. In the aftermath of the so-called "extraordinary measures" employed in the 1928 grain procurement Syrtsov was a consistent supporter of Stalin's proposal for "total collectivization" and the "liquidation of
kulaks as a class" in the Siberian Oblast Committee of the VKP(b) as a long-term solution to the problem of inadequate state grain collections. In connection with the move Syrtsov was made a
candidate member of the
Politburo of the by now renamed All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [VKP(b)], a move which likely emphasized the designs of Stalin and his associates to promote Syrtsov as Chairman of the All-Union CPC. He was also made a member of the
Council of Labor and Defense (STO), a key economic planning and distribution agency, in July 1929.
Syrtsov–Lominadze Affair of 1930 Syrtsov's tenure as head of the Russian government proved to be brief. The campaign for total collectivization of agriculture in the USSR proved to be dysfunctionally violent, marked by expropriations, forced deportations, and armed revolt. These excesses moved the decisive and independently minded Syrtsov into opposition, gathering like-minded individuals in the upper ranks of the Communist Party apparatus characterized by historian James Hughes as an "amateurish political plot to oust Stalin" for the violence and economic irrationality. The so-called Syrtsov–Lominadze Group planned to make their restructuring proposal at the forthcoming joint plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission, scheduled for October 1930. Syrtsov was replaced as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR by
Daniil Sulimov, his successor as secretary of the Urals Oblast Committee of the VKP(b). Syrtsov was arrested on 19 April 1937 during the
Great Purge. Following protracted interrogation he was sentenced to death on 10 September 1937 and executed in Moscow that same day. Syrtsov was posthumously
rehabilitated (exonerated) by the Military Collegium of the
Supreme Court of the USSR on 28 December 1957. ==Notes==