Kuchkin, Andrei

Born Nov. 25 (Dec. 7), 1888, in Beloretsk; died Mar. 30, 1973, in Moscow. Soviet historian; professor (1951). Member of the CPSU from 1912.

Kuchkin did underground work in Beloretsk, Ufa, and Viatka from 1910 to 1916. He was arrested and sent into exile several times. In 1917 he was one of the organizers of the Viatka Soviet and chairman of the committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). In May of the same year he was a delegate to the First All-Russian Congress of Peasant Deputies, where he met and conversed with V. I. Lenin. Kuchkin was a member of the Ufa city and provincial committees of the RCP (Bolshevik) from 1918 to 1919. During and after the Civil War (1918–20) he did political work in the Red Army. He was a delegate to the Tenth and Eleventh Congresses of the RCP(B).

In 1929, Kuchkin began his career as a scholar and teacher. He graduated from the Institute of the Red Professoriat, specializing in the history of the Communist Party. From 1934 to 1940 he worked at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism and from 1940, at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He is one of the authors of the textbooks A Short History of the ACP (Bolshevik)(edited by V. Iu. Knorin; 1934) and A History of the CPSU (edited by B. N. Ponomarev; 1959; 2nd ed., 1962; 3rd ed., 1970), as well as the History of the Kazakh SSR (1943; 2nd ed., vol. 2, 1949). Kuchkin also wrote Cheverev (1929), The Sovietization of the Kazakh Aul (1926–1929)(1962), In Those Days (1958), and In Battles and Campaigns From the Volga to the Enisei (1969). He was awarded two Orders of Lenin, as well as various medals.