Muralov, Aleksandr Ivanovich

(party pseudonym, Matvei). Born 1886 near Taganrog; died Oct. 30, 1937. Soviet political and party figure. Became member of the Communist Party in 1905.

The son of a small farmer, Muralov graduated from Moscow University in 1912. He was active in the Revolution of 1905–07. Subsequently he conducted party work in Serpukhov, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Podol’sk; he was arrested a number of times and imprisoned. After the February Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the Serpukhov soviet. In October 1917 he became chairman of the Aleksin district committee of the RCP(B) and of the Aleksin district executive committee of Tula Province. Later, he became a member of the bureau of the Tula provincial party committee, the provincial military commissar, and the commandant of the Tula fortified area. From 1920 to 1923, Muralov was chairman of the Moscow and Donetsk councils of the national economy and a member of the bureau of the Don committee of the RCP(B). From 1923 to 1928 he was chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod provincial executive committee as well as a member of the bureau of the provincial party committee. He became people’s commissar of agriculture of the RSFSR in 1929 and was deputy people’s commissar of agriculture of the USSR from 1933 to 1936.

Muralov was president of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences from 1935 to 1937. He was a delegate to the Ninth and to the Eleventh through Seventeenth Party Congresses. Muralov was also a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.