Kokovikhin, Mikhail Nikolaevich

Born Jan. 11 (23), 1883, in the village of Dresvianovo, now in Kirov Oblast; died Sept. 13, 1965, in Moscow. Soviet government and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1903. Son of a peasant.

During the Revolution of 1905–07, Kokovikhin took part in the soldiers’ rebellion in the Brest fortress (1906). From 1907 to 1909 he carried out party work in the Min’iar Plant (Urals). Several times he was subjected to repression. He began his service in the army in 1914. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was a member of the corps committee and of the executive committee of the Special Army. After the October Revolution of 1917 he became deputy chairman of the revolutionary committee of the Southwestern Front. In 1918, Kokovikhin served as commissar of a workers’ detachment of the Eastern Front. In 1919 he was a member of the presidium of the Viatka provincial committee of the RCP (Bolshevik). From 1920 he was chairman of the Ufa provincial executive committee; later he managed the agitation and propaganda section of the Urals bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(B). In 1924 he became chairman of the Commission of Party Control of the Urals Oblast. From 1925 he was a member of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission of the ACP (Bolshevik). From 1934 to 1937, Kokovikhin was deputy people’s commissar of social security of the RSFSR.

Kokovikhin retired in 1938. He was a delegate to the Ninth and Twelfth through Seventeenth Congresses of the party. At the Twelfth through Sixteenth Congresses he was elected a member of the Central Control Commission of the ACP(B). Kokovikhin was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, as well as a number of medals.