Aleksandr Petrovich Smirnov

Aleksandr Petrovich Smirnov (born in 1877 in the village of Nikola, in the Tver province – on February 9, 1938.) Was a Russian old Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet statesman.

Alexandr Smirnov. Photo made by NKVD, after his arrest in 1937

He became member of the Bolshevik Party in 1896. In 1917 he became chairman of the soviet in Bogorodsk (present-day Noginsk), and a member of the presidium of the soviet of Moscow province.

From 1919 to 1922 he was deputy people's commissar for food, and from 1923 to 1928 he was people's commissar for agriculture of the RSFSR and, at the same time, general secretary of the Peasant International.[1]

He aligned himself with Stalin in the early 1920s.[2] However, in 1933 he was expelled from the Central Committee, for his participation, together with Nikolai Eismont and Vladimir Tolmachev,[3] in the Rightist Smirnov-Eismont-Tolmachev opposition group.[4][5] Accusation which turned out be true, when some of Leon Trotsky's (who at the time was having contact with oppositionist groups in the USSR) private letters mentioned that this group indeed existed.[6] In December 1934 he was expelled from the Communist Party for alleged anti-Party activities.[7] Later, in March 1937, he was arrested.[4] On February 8, 1938, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death for alleged "Anti-Soviet activities".[4][7] The verdict was executed on February 10, 1938.[4]

He was rehabilitated in July 1958, and his CPSU membership was restored in 1960.[4]

References
  1. Extract from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979)
  2. Trotsky, Leon. "Leon Trotsky: On Lenin's Testament (1932)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2017-08-09.
  3. Wynn, Charters (2008). The "Right Opposition" and the "Smirnov-Eismont-Tolmachev Affa". pp. 97–113. doi:10.12987/yale/9780300134247.003.0006. ISBN 9780300134247.
  4. Smirnov, Aleksandr (20 August 2017). "Смирнов, Александр Петрович". www.amali-shop.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2017-08-20.
  5. Campbell, Robert Wellington (2012). A biobibliographical dictionary of Russian and Soviet economics. New York: Routledge. pp. 384–385. ISBN 9780415519465. OCLC 772112384.
  6. "Pierre Broué: The "Bloc" of the Oppositions against Stalin (January 1980)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2020-08-08.
  7. "Смирнов Александр Петрович Народный комиссар земледелия РСФСР (1923-1928г.)". www.portrets.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2017-08-20.
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