Valerian Kuybyshev

Valerian Kuybyshev Валериан Куйбышев
First Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union
Premier	Vyacheslav Molotov
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Nikolai Voznesensky
Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the Soviet Union
In office 10 November 1930 – 25 April 1934
Premier	Vyacheslav Molotov
Preceded by	Gleb Krzhizhanovsky
Succeeded by	Valery Mezhlauk
Chairman of the People's Control Commission
In office 11 February 1934 – 25 January 1935
Premier	Vyacheslav Molotov
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Nikolai Antipov
Personal details
Born	(1888-06-06)6 June 1888 Omsk, Russian Empire
Died	25 January 1935(1935-01-25) (aged 46) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Citizenship	Soviet
Nationality	Russian
Political party	All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik)

Valerian Vladimirovich Kuybyshev (Russian: Валериа́н Влади́мирович Ку́йбышев (1888–1935), was a Russian revolutionary, Red Army officer, and prominent Soviet politician.

Biography

Early life

Kuybyshev was born in Omsk in the Russian Empire on 6 June [O.S. 25 May] 1888. He studied at the Omsk Military Cadet School. He joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1904. The following year, he entered a military medical academy, but was expelled in 1906 for controversial political activities.

Revolutionary career

Between 1906-14 Kuybyshev performed subversive activities for the Bolsheviks throughout the Empire, for which he was exiled to Narym in Siberia where—together with Yakov Sverdlov—he set up a local Bolshevik organization. In May 1912 he fled and returned to Omsk, where he was arrested the next month, and imprisoned for a year. He was transferred to Tambov to live independently under police surveillance, but soon fled again, whereafter he spent 1913-14 encouraging civil unrest in the cities of St. Petersburg, Kharkov, and Vologda; relocated to Samara in 1917; and became President of the local soviet—a position he held at the time of the October Revolution and for the next year. During the Russian Civil War he chaired the revolutionary committee of Samara province and became a political commissar in the First and Fourth Red Armies.

Political career

In 1920 Kuybyshev was elected a member of Presidium of the Red International of Trade Unions, which charged him with the implementation of the GOELRO plan.From 6 July 1923-5 August 1926 he was the first economical inspector of the USSR. From 1926–1930 he chaired the Supreme Council of the National Economy, 1930–1934 directed Gosplan, and served as a full member of the Politburo from 1934 until his death. As a principal economic advisor to Joseph Stalin, he was one of the most influential members in the Communist Party. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Kuybyshev officially died in Moscow on January 25, 1935 of heart failure and alcoholism, days after proposing an investigation of the Sergey Kirov case. At the height of the Great Purge, in 1937, his wife and brother were executed by firing squad under obscure charges^{[citation needed]}.

As Bolshevik tradition had established, he was buried outside the Kremlin walls.

Personal life

Kuybyshev married twice, but never had any children. He was a practiced musician and poet. One of his wives was the niece of Yevgenia Bosch, Galina Aleksandrovna Troyanovskaya.

Commemoration

The city of Samara (the administrative city of the Samara Oblast, Russia), the town of Bolgar (in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia), and the town of Haghartsin, Armenia were all renamed Kuybyshev during the period between 1935 and 1991. The towns of Kuybyshev in Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia, and Kuybyshev, Armenia, still have his name.

External links

• Biography (English)
• page (Russian)
• page (Russian)
• page (Russian)