Shiriamov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich

Born Jan. 21,1883, in Irkutsk; died June 23, 1955, in Moscow. A leader in the struggle to establish Soviet power in Siberia. Member of the CPSU from 1900.

The son of a petty merchant, Shiriamov became a worker in 1898. He took part in the Revolution of 1905–07 in Irkutsk and Omsk, where he was a member of the RSDLP committee: he was arrested numerous times. In 1913 he undertook party work in the coal mines of Transbaikalia. After the February Revolution of 1917, Shiriamov became chairman of the soviet and of the committee of the RSDLP at the Adagan coal mines, chief of the Red Guard, and a member of the Transbaikal oblast committee of the RSDLP. In late 1917 he became commissar of industry in Chita and chairman of the Transbaikal oblast mining council.

Shiriamov began underground party work in the summer of 1918 and helped organize the partisan movement in Siberia. He became chairman of the Siberian oblast committee of the RCP(B) in late 1919. In 1920 he became chairman of the Irkutsk revolutionary military committee, the Irkutsk soviet, and the Omsk provincial committee of the RCP(B) and a member of the party’s Far East Bureau. In 1922 and 1923 he was a member of the Siberian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) and a member of the Presidium of the Siberian Bureau of the Supreme Council on the National Economy.

In 1923, Shiriamov moved to Moscow to assume a post in the defense industry. In 1925 he became deputy chairman of Glavpolitprosvet (Central Committee of the Republic for Political Education). Shiriamov later engaged in scholarly work and in 1941 became a personal pensioner.