Aleksandr Petrovich Smirnov

Aleksandr Petrovich Smirnov was born in 1877 in the village of Nikola, in the Tver province. He died on February 9, 1938.

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

He became member of the Communist 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 alleged participation, together with Nikolai Eismont and Vladimir Tolmachev,[3] in the Rightist Smirnov-Eismont-Tolmachev opposition group.[4][5] In December 1934 he was expelled from the Communist Party for alleged anti-Party activities.[6] 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][6] The verdict was executed on February 10, 1938.[4]

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