Krasnoshchekov, Aleksandr Mikhailovich

Born in 1880; died Nov. 26, 1937. Soviet statesman and party figure and a leader in the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power in the Far East. Member of the Communist Party from August 1917.

Krasnoshchekov was born in Chernobyl’, in present-day Kiev Oblast. His father was a shop assistant. In 1912 he graduated from a higher educational institution in Chicago. A member of the Social Democratic movement from 1896, Krasnoshchekov conducted party work in Kiev, Nikolaev, Poltava, and Ekaterinoslav. He emigrated to the USA in 1902 and joined the American Socialist Party.

Returning to Russia in the summer of 1917, Krasnoshchekov became a member of the Vladivostok soviet and subsequently chairman of the Nikol’sko-Ussuri party regional comittee and chairman of the Executive Committee of soviets of the Far Eastern Krai. In 1918 he was chairman of the Far Eastern Council of People’s Commissars and headed the staff of the Far Eastern Army. In 1919 he was in Siberia conducting underground party work. In 1920–21 he was a member of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) and the Far Eastern Bureau of the RCP (B). That same year he was chairman and foreign minister of the Far Eastern Republic. In 1921–22, he was deputy people’s commissar of finances of the RSFSR, and in 1922 he became chairman of the board of Prombank (Industrial Bank) of the USSR and a member of the Presiduim of the Supreme Council of the National Economy. In 1926, Krasnoshchekov was appointed head of the Central Office of New Fiber Crops under the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR.