Matvei Shkiriatov

Born Aug. 3 (15), 1883, in the village of Vishniakovo, Tula Province; died Jan. 18, 1954, in Moscow. Soviet party figure. Member of the CPSU from 1906.

The son of a peasant, Shkiriatov was a worker. He carried out party work in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, and Tula and was arrested several times. In 1915 he was conscripted into the army, where he carried on revolutionary propaganda among the soldiers. After the February Revolution of 1917, Shkiriatov served on the executive committee of the Moscow soviet of soldiers’ deputies, the military bureau of the Moscow committee of the RSDLP(B), the executive committee of the Tula soviet, and the Tula revolutionary military committee. From 1918 to 1920 he was secretary of the central committee of the garment workers’ union and a member of the Moscow oblast and city committees of the party.

In 1921, Shkiriatov began serving in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the RCP(B); he was named chairman of the Central Commission for Review and Purge of the Party’s Ranks. In 1923 he became a member of the Central Control Commission of the party, and from 1927 to 1934 he was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate of the USSR. In 1934 he became a member of the Commission of Party Control of the Central Committee of the ACP(B), and from 1935 to 1952 he was deputy chairman of the commission. In 1952 he was named chairman of the body, which was reorganized in the same year and renamed the Committee of Party Control of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Shkiriatov was a delegate to the Eighth through Nineteenth Party Congresses. He was elected a member of the Central Control Commission at the Eleventh through Sixteenth Congresses and a member of the Central Committee at the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congresses. In 1952 and 1953 he served on the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Shkiriatov was a delegate to the Seventh Congress of the Comintern. He served as a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and as a deputy to the first through third convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Shkiriatov, who was awarded three Orders of Lenin and various medals, is buried on Red Square by the Kremlin wall.