Emmanuil Kviring

Born Sept. 1 (13), 1888; died Nov. 26, 1937. Soviet statesman and party figure; doctor of economics (1934). Member of the Communist Party from 1912. Born in the village of Novolipovka, present-day Fedorovka Raion, Saratov Oblast. Son of a German colonist who was a volost (small rural district) clerk. A member of the revolutionary movement from 1906.

In 1913, Kviring became secretary of the Bolshevik group of the Fourth State Duma and contributed to the newspaper Pravda. He engaged in party work in St. Petersburg and Ekaterinoslav. He was subjected a number of times to repression. In 1917 he was chairman of the committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) and chairman of the soviet and the provincial revolutionary committee in Ekaterinoslav. In 1918–19 he was chairman of the Supreme Council on the National Economy of the Ukraine.

Kviring was a leader of the party underground in the Ukraine during the Civil War (1918–20). He was a member of the Soviet delegation that signed the peace treaty with Poland in 1921. In 1920–22, Kviring was secretary of the Ekaterinoslav and, subsequently, of the Donetsk provincial party committees. In 1918–25 he was a member and in 1918 and 1923–25, secretary, of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine. In 1925–27 he was deputy chairman of the Supreme Council on the National Economy of the USSR. In 1927–30 he was deputy chairman of Gosplan (State Planning Commission) of the USSR. In 1931 he was deputy people’s commissar of transportation and communication. In 1932–34 he was deputy chairman of the Committee of Commodity Funds of the Council of Labor and Defense. In 1934, Kviring was appointed first deputy chairman of Gosplan of the USSR. At the same time in 1930 he was made head of economics at the Institute of the Red Professoriat and in 1932–36, director of the Economics Institute of the Communist Academy.

Kviring was a delegate to the Eighth and Eleventh through Seventeenth Party Congresses and was elected a member of the Central Committee of the ACP (Bolshevik) at the Twelfth through Sixteenth Congresses. He was also a member of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Kviring was the author of several works on questions of party policy and on Soviet economics. He was awarded the Order of Badge of Honor.