Konstantin Strievskii

Born Sept. 20, (Oct. 2), 1885, in the village of Gol’shany, Oshmiany District, Vil’na Province; died Apr. 21, 1938. Soviet party and state figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1902.

The son of peasants, Strievskii became a worker in Riga in 1896. He took part in the Revolution of 1905–07 and subsequently was repeatedly arrested and exiled. He was involved in party work in Velikii Ustiug, Moscow, and Astrakhan. In 1916, having been drafted into the army, he carried on Social Democratic propaganda among the soldiers of the Petrograd garrison.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Strievskii was chairman of a battalion soldiers” committee and a member of the Petrograd soviet. He took part in the October Revolution of 1917. In 1918—19 he was commissar of provisions in Petrograd, and between 1919 and 1921 he was in charge of food supplies for the Southeastern, Western, Petrograd, and Caucasian fronts. Subsequently he held administrative posts in the economy. He was chairman of the Metalworkers” Union in Moscow from 1923 to 1927, chairman of the Moscow Sovnarkhoz (Council of the National Economy) and of the Moscow oblast soviet of trade unions from 1927 to 1930, chairman of the Supreme Council on the National Economy of the RSFSR from 1930 to 1932, and people’s commissar for light industry of the RSFSR from 1932 to 1934. In 1934 he became chairman of the Central Committee of the Heavy “Machine-building Workers” Union.

A delegate to the Twelfth through Seventeenth Party Congresses, Strievskii was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee at the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Seventeenth Congresses and a member of the Central Committee at the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Congresses. He was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.