Vedernikov, Aleksei Stepanovich

(Party pseudonym, Sibiriak). Born Jan. 27 (Feb. 8), 1880, in Omsk; died Jan. 12, 1919, in Vyksa. Revolutionary figure; active participant in the armed uprising in Moscow in October. Born into the family of a petty official.

Vedernikov was a member of the revolutionary movement of the Communist Party from 1897. In October 1905 he was the organizer of political strikes and the leader of combat groups in Tomsk. He participated in the armed uprising in December 1905 in Moscow. He was a member of the Moscow committee of the RSDLP and of the Military-Technical Bureau and organizer of combat groups. He fought on the barricades in the Presnia area. In 1906-07, Vedernikov was a member of the Urals Oblast Committee of the RSDLP. He was a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the CPSU (1907). He was persecuted by the tsarist government.

Beginning in April 1917, Vedernikov was a member of the Moscow committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) and of the Executive Committee of the Moscow soviet. He was one of the organizers of the Red Guard in Moscow. He was a delegate to the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). In October 1917 he was a member of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee and the head of the Central Staff of the Red Guard. Vedernikov led the operation which seized the telegraph, telephone, and post offices. In March 1918 on account of illness he was compelled to retire to Nizhegorod Province, where he worked as the commissar of the Vyksa and Kulebaki factories. In the summer of 1918 he led the detachment of workers that crushed the counterrevolutionary mutiny in Murom.