Lenin’s successor as premier, destroyed as the Right Opposition
In November 1917 Rykov resigned from Sovnarkom and the Central Committee alongside Kamenev, Zinoviev and others, objecting that the government had not formed a coalition of all socialist parties. Sources date this to 16 or 17 November; he retracted it a few days later.
Rykov became chairman of Sovnarkom after Lenin's death, leading the Soviet government for six years and embodying the administrative continuity of NEP. During the Civil War he had directed the wartime economy as chairman of VSNKh and overseen Red Army logistics. As premier he stood with Bukharin and Tomsky as the core of the party's 'Right,' championing the worker-peasant alliance, gradual socialist construction through the market, and balanced industrialization. He opposed Stalin's forced collectivization and breakneck industrialization during the 1928-29 grain crisis, was branded the 'Right Opposition' and removed as premier in 1930, arrested in 1937, executed after the third Moscow trial of 1938, and rehabilitated in 1988.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1924–1930Chairman of Sovnarkom
The Soviet Politburo
- Full member 1922.04–1930.12
1930.12 removed · Executed in 1938
Related historical events
- 1917.02–07The February RevolutionDeputy chairman of the Moscow SovietFreed by the February Revolution, he was immediately elected deputy chairman of the Moscow Soviet.
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionCommissar of Internal AffairsHe became the first Commissar of Internal Affairs, though he soon resigned for a time in demanding an all-socialist coalition government.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionLeader in the Supreme Economic Council and government
- 1922.12Formation of the USSRLenin's personal emissary to GeorgiaDispatched to Georgia on Lenin's orders, he personally witnessed Ordzhonikidze strike Kabakhidze in Ordzhonikidze's Tbilisi apartment: the incident that became Lenin's decisive grounds for holding Stalin and Dzerzhinsky politically accountable.
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)Head of governmentAs chairman of Sovnarkom after Lenin's death, he was responsible for running the NEP economy.
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationHead of government, opponentAs chairman of Sovnarkom he warned against the excesses of the crash course and was removed in 1930.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeTargetA former head of government executed after the 1938 Moscow Trial.
From Underground Revolutionary to Civil War Economic Chief
Rykov joined the RSDLP in 1899 (some sources say 1898) at age 18 and, while still a first-year law student at Kazan University, entered the local party committee and led workers' study circles. Arrested in 1901, he spent a total of five and a half years in prison and exile before the February Revolution of 1917, repeatedly escaping. He was elected a full member of the Central Committee at the III and IV Party Congresses and a candidate member at the V Congress. He served in the party leadership across multiple terms (1905–07, 1910–11 in French emigration, and beyond). In 1911 he was dispatched to Russia to prepare the Prague Party Conference but was arrested in Moscow and exiled to Pinega in Arkhangelsk province and later to the Narym region. Freed by the February Revolution, he was immediately elected deputy chairman of the Moscow Soviet. In October 1917 he became the first People's Commissar of Internal Affairs in the first Soviet government, signing the decree 'On the Workers' Militia.' However, insisting on a broad coalition of all socialist parties, he resigned from Sovnarkom and the Central Committee after only nine days (together with Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others), only to retract his resignation shortly afterward. During the Civil War he served as Chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh, 1918–1921) and concurrently as the extraordinary plenipotentiary of the Council of Labour and Defence for supply of the Red Army and Navy (chusosnabarm), effectively running Red Army logistics. He was also a member of the Republic's Revolutionary Military Council in 1919. He spoke out against the Red Terror in 1918. In 1923 he again became VSNKh chairman and, with Lenin gravely ill, directed the entire practical work of government before formally succeeding Lenin as premier in February 1924.
Lenin's Successor as Premier — Administrative Continuity of NEP
Rykov became chairman of Sovnarkom (premier) after Lenin's death in 1924, embodying the administrative continuity of NEP. He was a central figure of the 'Right' tendency, advocating the worker-peasant alliance, gradual adjustment of market mechanisms, and balanced industrialization. During the grain procurement crisis of 1928-29 he opposed Stalin's forced collectivization and rapid industrialization line, and was branded part of the 'Right Opposition' alongside Bukharin and Tomsky. Dismissed as premier in 1930, he was politically annihilated and executed in 1938 at the third Moscow trial as a member of the alleged 'anti-Soviet bloc.'
The Fallen Premier: Purge and the Repression of His Family
After his removal from power, Rykov lost the chairmanship of Sovnarkom on 19 December 1930 and his Politburo seat on 21 December 1930, and on 30 March 1931 was given the minor post of People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs (the commissariat was renamed Communications in January 1932). A contemporary, Smirtyukov, recalled that he delivered a long speech chiefly confessing his 'mistakes' and wrong political views. He was demoted to candidate (non-voting) member of the Central Committee on 10 February 1934, and after the first Moscow trial and Tomsky's suicide he lost the communications commissariat on 26 September 1936.
At the February 1937 Central Committee plenum a 35-member commission under Mikoyan examined the 'Bukharin and Rykov case.' It favored expelling the two from candidate Central Committee membership and from the party, with some members urging a military tribunal and shooting and others a trial without execution. Stalin's proposal 'not to put them on trial but send the Bukharin-Rykov case to the NKVD' was adopted unanimously. Rykov was expelled and arrested on 27 February 1937, held in the Lubyanka prison, and confessed guilt at interrogation.
He was tried as a principal accused in the open Third Moscow Trial of the alleged 'Right-Trotskyist anti-Soviet bloc.' In his last word he called on those not yet unmasked to unmask themselves at once and offered to help the government unmask and liquidate the remnants of the counter-revolutionary organization. He was sentenced to death on 13 March 1938 and shot on 15 March 1938 at the Kommunarka range; part of the English-language record gives 14 March instead.
His family was repressed as well. His wife, Nina Semyonova (née Marshak), was arrested in 1937, and Yevgenia Ginzburg recorded seeing her in Butyrka prison vainly seeking news of her husband. Accounts of her execution diverge between 4 March 1938 and 22 August 1938; the Russian-language record gives her arrest on 7 July 1937, her death on 22 August 1938, and her posthumous rehabilitation in 1957. His daughter, Natalya Alekseevna Perli-Rykova (22 August 1916 – 9 January 2010), received OSO sentences in 1939, 1946 and 1950, spent eighteen years in camps and exile (marrying a deported Estonian there in 1949), and was rehabilitated in 1956. His brother Ivan and sister Klavdia died of disease during the Civil War, and his sister Faina Ivanovna (1878–1946) was herself repressed as a family member of a traitor to the motherland. Rykov was fully rehabilitated by a ruling of the plenum of the USSR Supreme Court on 4 February 1988 and posthumously reinstated in the party the same year.