Rykov, Aleksei Ivanovich (1881-1938)

Soviet communist. He was chairman of the Supreme Council of National Economy (1918-20 and 1923-24), deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (1921-24), and succeeded Lenin as chairman (1924-30). He was also a member of the Communist Party's Politburo.

He entered the Russian Social Democratic Worker's Party in 1901, joining its militant wing and later the Bolshevik faction. He worked underground in Russia and resented Lenin's intolerant directives from abroad. Rykov broke with Lenin in 1910 and became one of the leading Party-minded Bolsheviks, a sub-faction more conciliatory to Mensheviks. Rykov maintained this conciliatory attitude after the February Revolution in 1917. After the Bolshevik seizure of power, he advocated a coalition government of all socialist parties. In the inner-party struggle after Lenin's death, Rykov supported Stalin against Trotsky and Zinovyev, but joined the Right opposition against the compulsory collectivization of agriculture and was one of its principal leaders. After the defeat of the opposition, Rykov was commissar for posts and telegraphs (1931-37). At the last of the big show trials of the great purge in 1938 he was sentenced to death.