Kuprian Kirkizh

Born Sept. 17 (29), 1886, in the village of Smoliantsy, Vitebsk Province; died May 24, 1932, in Moscow. Soviet statesman and party figure. Became a member of the Communist Party in 1910. The son of a peasant.

Kirkizh was a worker; he became involved in party activities in Riga and Kharkov beginning in 1910. In 1917 he became chairman of the Petinskii (plant) raion committee and a member of the Kharkov committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) and of the Kharkov soviet. In 1917–18 he helped organize the Red Guard and units of the Red Army. During the Civil War (1918–20), Kirkizh in 1919 became commissar of the detached Donets Brigade and commissar of units of the Ekaterinoslav Forces and fought against Denikin’s troops and the Makhno gangs. After serving as secretary of the Kharkov Province Party Committee from 1922 and as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine from 1923, Kirkizh was chief of the organization department of the Central Committee of the CP(B) of the Ukraine in 1925, people’s commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate of the Ukrainian SSR from 1926 to 1927, and secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(B) of Uzbekistan from 1927 to 1929. He served as chairman of the Central Committee of the Trade Union of Soviet Trade Employees, a member of the Presidium of the All-Union Central Council of the Trade Unions, and a candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR from 1929 to 1931. Kirkizh was elected chairman of the Central Committee of the Machine Building Workers’ Trade Union in 1931.

Kirkizh was a delegate to the Eleventh through Sixteenth Congresses of the party and was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) at the Thirteenth Congress, a member of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) at the Fourteenth and Fifteenth congresses, and a member of the Central Control Commission of the ACP(B) at the Sixteenth congress. He is buried in Red Square at the Kremlin wall.