Vasilii Vladimirovich Kuraev

Born 1892 in Penza; died Jan. 10, 1938. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1914. Son of an office worker.

Kuraev engaged in party work in Petrograd and Penza and in revolutionary work among the soldiers in World War I. After the February Revolution of 1917, Kuraev was one of the organizers of the Penza soviet and editor of the newspaper Golos pravdy. He was a delegate to the Seventh All-Russian (April) Conference of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) and to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets. He was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and a delegate to the Sixth Party Congress. After the victory of the October Revolution of 1917, he was chairman of the Executive Committee of the Penza provincial soviet and secretary of the provincial committee of the RCP (Bolshevik).

Kuraev took part in the routing of the Czechoslovak counterrevolutionary mutiny in 1918. In the Civil War of 1918–20 he engaged in military-political work in the Red Army and was a member of the revolutionary military council of the Fourth Army. From 1920, Kuraev was member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture, a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Economy, and vice-chairman of a section of the Gosplan (State Planning Commission) of the USSR, as well as a delegate to the Eighth and Tenth Party Congresses.