Syrtsov S. V.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR

Involvement of Sergey Syrtsov in revolutionary activities began in 1913, when as a student in St. Petersburg he joined the Bolshevik party. In 1917 Syrtsov worked on party assignments in Petrograd and Rostov-na-Donu. In 1918 he became deputy chairman of the Don Soviet Republic government and participated in the Civil War. In 1920 he was appointed secretary of the Odessa province party organization in Ukraine, but soon was transferred to Moscow to supervise the work of one of the party Central Committee departments (1921-1926). During this period he became candidate member of the Central Committee (1924-1927). In 1926 Syrtsov took the key post in Siberia as secretary of the Siberian provincial party committee and the next year he earned another promotion as full member of the party Central Committee (1927-1930). On 18 May 1929, on the motion, proposed by Mikhail Kalinin, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee appointed Syrtsov chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Russia. He also joined the Politburo as candidate member (21 Jun 1929 - 1 Dec 1930). However, his involvement in one of the few party groups, who clandestinely discussed the removal of Stalin and the reversal of the disastrous economic policies, cost him the premiership and quickly prompted his expulsion from the Politburo. During the joint session of the Politburo and the Presidium of the Central Control Commission on 4 Nov 1930, Syrtsov openly confronted Stalin and declared the Politburo to be "a fiction." On 1 Dec 1930, he was expelled from the Politburo and the Central Committee for belonging to a party faction labeled as the "right leftist bloc of Syrtsov and Lominadze."

In 1930s, Syrtsov worked as a manager for a wood exporting state company and also held a number of positions in other state-owned enterprises. Before his arrest on 19 Apr 1937, he held an office of director of a chemical plant. He was sentenced to death by the Military Board of the Supreme Court on 10 Sep 1937, for "involvement in anti-Soviet terrorist organization" and executed the same day.