Andrey Lukich Kolegaev (March 22, 1887, Surgut, Tobolsk Governorate — March 23, 1937) was a Russian revolutionary and statesman, one of the prominent leaders of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and People's Commissar of Agriculture of Russia from November 1917 to March 1918. His Nizhny Novgorod connection rests on his birth: according to Wikidata, his place of birth is given as Nizhny Novgorod, although the Tatar Encyclopedia names Surgut in Tobolsk Governorate.[1]
Political career
Kolegaev studied at Kharkov University but was expelled in 1907 for revolutionary activity. He had been a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party since 1906. In 1909 he was sentenced to four years of exile in Arkhangelsk Governorate; the punishment was commuted to expulsion from Russia for the same term, and in the end he spent seven years in emigration.[1]
After the February Revolution of 1917, Kolegaev worked as an attorney for the Moscow–Kazan Railway Company in Kazan. From May 1917 he sat on the governorate zemstvo board, and in October he was elected a member of the Kazan City Duma. In March 1917, following the split in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, he headed the Kazan organization of the Left SRs, and from October of that year he joined its Central Committee and the editorial board of the newspaper "For Land and Freedom."[1]
In May 1917 Kolegaev chaired the First Governorate Peasant Congress and was elected chairman of the Kazan Governorate Soviet of Peasant Deputies. He was one of the authors of the Soviet's resolution of May 13, 1917, on transferring privately owned lands and estates to the control of volost committees. In August 1917, at the First Congress of Delegates of the Soldiers' Sections of the Soviets of the Kazan Military District, he called on soldiers to join the proletariat's struggle against the propertied classes, and in September, at the Second Governorate Peasant Congress, he secured the release of arrested leaders of agrarian uprisings.[1]
People's Commissar of Agriculture
Kolegaev took part in the October armed uprising in Petrograd and was a delegate to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies (October 25–27, 1917), where he was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. At the same time he was a deputy to the Constituent Assembly from Kazan Governorate, and in January 1918 he signed an appeal in support of its dissolution.[1]
From November 1917 to March 1918, Kolegaev was a member of the Council of People's Commissars as People's Commissar of Agriculture of Russia and was one of the authors of the draft law "On the Socialization of Land," which was adopted by the Soviet government. In March 1918 he spoke out against ratification of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. From May to July 1918 he headed the presidium of the executive committee of the Kazan Governorate Soviet of Workers', Peasants', and Red Army Deputies.[1]
Kolegaev did not support the Left SR rebellion in July 1918. In his article "What Is to Be Done," he judged the Left SRs' withdrawal from the Council of People's Commissars to have been a mistake and argued for class stratification of the countryside and a struggle against the kulaks. After the suppression of the rebellion he broke with the Left SR Party and in November 1918 joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).[1]
The Civil War and the following years
During the Civil War, Kolegaev held military and economic posts: from November 1918 to January 1919 he was military commissar of the 13th Rifle Division, and in 1919–1920 he was chairman of the Special Food Commission and a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front. In 1920–1921 he sat on the board of the People's Commissariat of Railways of the USSR, after which he moved to administrative and economic work.[1]
Kolegaev was unjustly repressed and died on March 23, 1937; he was later rehabilitated posthumously.[1]
Sources
- tatarica.org — Kolegaev Andrey Lukich — Tatar Encyclopedia TATARICA