Radchenko, Ivan

Born Oct. 10 (22), 1874, in Konotop; died May 1, 1942. Member of the Russian Social Democratic movement; Soviet government figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1898. Son of a small lumber merchant and brother of S. I. Radchenko.

In 1898, Radchenko joined the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. He was an Iskra agent in 1901 and 1902 and established the newspaper’s underground printing works in Kishinev. In 1902 he was a member of the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP and a representative of Iskra in the Organizational Committee for the Convocation of the Second Congress of the RSDLP. Radchenko was arrested in November 1902. In 1903 he was exiled to Siberia, from where he escaped abroad in 1905. Beginning in October 1905 he engaged in party work in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Baku, Kharkov, and Odessa. In 1912 he began working on the construction of a peat-fueled electric power plant in Bo-gorodsk District, Moscow Province (now Noginsk Raion, Moscow Oblast).

Radchenko was chairman of the Bogorodsk soviet after the February Revolution of 1917. An organizer and manager of the Soviet republic’s peat industry beginning in November 1917, he was chairman of the Central Board of the Peat Industry of the Supreme Council on the National Economy of the RSFSR from 1918 to 1931. In 1921 and 1922 he was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade, deputy people’s commissar, and chairman of the Sugar Trust. From 1923 to 1931 he was a member of the Presidium and vice-chairman of the Supreme Council on the National Economy of the RSFSR. Beginning in 1927 he held administrative and managerial posts. He was a delegate to the Sixteenth Congress of the ACP(B).

Radchenko wrote many articles and memoirs. His memoirs of V. I. Lenin are in the collection V. I. Lenin at the Head of the Great Construction (1960).