Aleksey Kiselev

Aleksey Semenovich Kiselev (1879-October 30, 1937) was a Russian Bolshevik Party leader and Soviet Union official.

Biography

Born near Ivanovo-Voznesensk, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898 working for the party in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Moscow, Kharkov, Baku and Odessa. He was arrested on multiple occasions. In 1914, Kiselev joined the Central Committee of the party, and shortly thereafter he was arrested again and sent to Siberia by the Tsarist authorities.

In the general amnesty of the February Revolution, he returned to the east in 1917 and resumed his position of the Central Committee. He later became only a candidate (alternate) member of the Central Committee, and served this role from 1917 to 1934.

In 1920 Kiselev supported the Workers' Opposition, but conformed to party discipline when the group was banned. From 1923-1924 he served as a member of the presidium of the "TSKK" (Central Control Commission of the Communist Party). In 1923 Kiselev also became the People's Commissar of the Workerss and Peasants' Inspection of the Russian SFSR, and a reserve member to the same role for the whole Soviet Union.

With Joseph Stalin in power, on September 7, 1937, after 20 years of service to the Soviet government, Kiselev was arrested for allegedly belonging to an "anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organisation". Uncharacteristic of the slaughter of Old Bolsheviks who led such distinguished and long careers, Kiselev was almost immediately shot after his arrest (in Moscow).

He was among the first of Stalin's victims to be rehabilitated, in 1956 (at the very beginning of De-Stalinization).