RYKOV, ALEXEI IVANOVICH (1881-1938), Russian politician, was born in Saratov, the son of a peasant. Saratov was a place of banishment for revolutionaries, and Rykov came under their influence. When he went to Kazan he was already taking part in social democratic organizations. He was imprisoned and sent back to Saratov to remain under police supervision. Con tinuing his revolutionary work, he was rearrested, but escaped abroad before his trial. He visited Lenin at Geneva, and returned to Russia as a propagandist in various industrial districts. In 1904 he was in Moscow, and in 1905 attended a congress of the Communist party which elected him a member of the party's cen tral committee. On returning from the congress he was arrested in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). He was freed by the revolution of 1905, was a representative of the Bolsheviks in the St. Petersburg workmen's soviet and escaped from the capital when the soviet was arrested. He took part in the December revolt and the fight ing on the barricades in Moscow, escaped to Odessa after the failure of that revolt, but presently was again working in Moscow, where he was arrested, but once more succeeded in escaping.
In 1907 he was arrested and banished to Samara, but went abroad to visit Lenin. He was arrested on returning and exiled to the province of Archangel for three years. He escaped shortly before the end of his term of exile, and went to Paris. He returned to Russia to organize a congress, was arrested in 1911 and remained in prison till 1913, when in October he was sentenced to exile to the Narym district for four years. In 1915 he escaped, went to Samara, was recaptured and sent back to the Narym district, where he remained until the revolution of 1917, after which he worked in the Moscow Bolshevik organization. He was active in the November revolution, became president of the supreme eco nomic council, and succeeded Lenin as president of the council of people's commissars. After 1929 his influence waned. Expelled in March 1937, he was shot following a trial in March 1938.