Alexander Gavrilovich Shliapnikov (30 August 1885-2 September 1937) was a Russian trade union leader and one of the key leaders of the February Revolution in Petrograd in 1917.
Biography[]
Alexander Gavrilovich Shliapnikov was born on 30 August 1885 in Murom, Russian Empire to a poor family, and he began to work at a factory at the young age of thirteen. In 1903, Shliapnikov joined the Bolsheviks, and he left Russia in 1908 after the failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution. In 1916, he returned to Russia, and he emerged as one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks in Petrograd during the Russian Revolution of 1917, being described as the main leader of the October Revolution. He became Commissar of Labor under the Russian SFSR, but he would leave office in 1918 and became a critic of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1921, he was deposed as leader of the Metalworkers' Union, and he was expelled from the CPSU in 1931. On 2 September 1937, he was executed by Stalin's NKVD during the Great Purge.