{{Short description|Russian Old Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet official and statesman}} {{Infobox officeholder | name = Ivan Akulov | image = Akulov ia.jpg | image_size = 180px | order = | office = Procurator General of the Soviet Union | term_start = 20 June 1933 | term_end = 3 March 1935 | premier = Vyacheslav Molotov | predecessor = Pyotr Krasikov | successor = Andrey Vyshinsky | birth_date = {{Birth date|1888|4|24|df=y}} | birth_place = Saint Petersburg, {{nowrap|Russian Empire}} | death_date = {{death date and age|1937|10|30|1888|4|24|df=y}} | death_place = Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union | party = RSDLP (1902–1903) <br />RSDLP (Bolsheviks) {{nowrap|(1903–1918)}} <br />Russian Communist Party (1918–1937) | profession = | native_name = {{nobold|Иван Акулов}} | native_name_lang = ru }} '''Ivan Alekseyevich Akulov''' ({{langx|ru|Иван Алексеевич Акулов}}; {{OldStyleDate|24 April|1888|12 April}} {{endash}} 30 October 1937) was a leading Russian Old Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet official and statesman, who for a few months was nominally second in command of the political police, the OGPU.
== Career == Akulov was born in St Petersburg, son a small trader.<ref name=":0">{{cite web |title=Акулов Иван Алексеевич (1888–1938 гг.) |url=http://kraeved.opck.org/lichnosti/aktivisti_bolshevistskogo_dvijeniya/akulov.php |website=История Оренбужья |access-date=6 June 2018}}</ref> He joined the revolutionaries as a teenager, during the 1905 revolution and joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1907. In 1912, he was one of the organisers of one of the largest demonstrations ever staged in St Petersburg during the reign of the Tsars, in which 60,000 factory workers participated.{{sfn|Medvedev|1976|p=217}} After the Bolshevik revolution in November 1917, he was posted to Yekaterinburg, as secretary of the Ural provincial party committee of the Russian Communist Party, and from there played a leading role in establishing communist rule in Siberia, and Central Asia, where he was secretary of the Kyrgyr communist party in 1920–21.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Zalessky |first1=K.A. |title=Акулов Иван Алексеевич, Биографический указатель |url=http://hrono.ru/biograf/bio_a/akulov_ia.php |website=Chronos |access-date=28 March 2022}}</ref> He was a party secretary in Crimea, 1921–22, chairman of the Donets miners' union, 1922–27, and chairman of the Ukraine trade union council, 1927–1931.
In July 1931, Akulov was suddenly transferred to Moscow, as first deputy chairman of the OGPU. The OGPU was nominally headed by the terminally ill Vyacheslav Menzhinsky. Its effective head was Genrikh Yagoda, who was relegated to the post of second deputy chairman. This appears to have been a first attempt by Joseph Stalin to wrest control of the police from Yagoda, whom he did not trust. The attempt did not work: as one senior officer said after Yagoda had been ousted, five years later, "the entire party organisation in the OGPU was devoted to sabotaging Akulov."<ref>{{cite book |last1=McSmith |first1=Andy |title=Fear and the Muse Kept Watch |date=2015 |publisher=New Press |location=New York |isbn=978-1-62097-079-9 |page=88}}</ref> In October 1932, Akulov returned to Ukraine, as First Secretary of the Donets party committee.
In 1933, Akulov was recalled to Moscow, as USSR Prosecutor General, with Nikolai Krylenko and Andrei Vyshinsky as his deputies, in what may have been a move to build up the prosecutors' office as a counterweight to the OGPU, now that it was back under Yagoda's control. He demonstrated his loyalty to Stalin at a session of the Central Committee in January 1933, by declaring: "Stalin's policy is our policy, the policy of the entire party, it is the policy not only of the proletarian revolution in our country but of the proletarian revolution in the world. That's what Stalin's policy is all about.".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Getty |first1=J.Arch and Naumov, Oleg V. |title=The Road to Terror, Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 |date=2010 |publisher=Yale U.P. |location=New Haven |isbn=978-0-300-10407-3 |page=49}}</ref> But after the assassination of Sergei Kirov, unlike his two deputies, Akulov objected when Stalin proposed to pin the murder on the Old Bolsheviks, Zinoviev and Kamenev.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rayfield |first1=Donald |title=Stalin and His Hangmen, The Tyrant and Those Who Killed For Him |date=2004 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=0-375-50632-2 |page=259}}</ref> In June 1935, he was appointed to succeed Avel Yenukidze as secretary of the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the soviets, putting him in charge of security in the Kremlin, while Vyshinsky replaced him as prosecutor general.
In 1937, after Akulov had a fall while skating, and suffered a near fatal concussion, Stalin ordered that surgeons be brought from abroad to save his life.{{sfn|Medvedev|1976|p=291}} Two of his former deputies, Vyshinsky and Grigori Roginsky, sent messages wishing him a speedy recover. He returned to work, only to be arrested on 23 July 1937. On hearing about his arrest, one of his colleagues Valentin Trifonov, protested to the chairman of the Central Executive Committee, Mikhail Kalinin who took up the case with Stalin, and was bluntly told: "You always were a liberal."<ref name=":0" /> Akulov confessed under torture to having been a Trotskyite. After he was sentenced to death, he told Roginsky "You know I'm not guilty." Roginsky replied with a stream of abuse.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rayfield |title=Stalin and His Hangmen |page=483}}</ref>
Akulov was accused of having been a Trotskyist since 1927, and of being involved in a 'fascist military conspiracy' with the Red Army commander Iona Yakir. His name was on a death list signed by Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, and Voroshilov on 21 October 1937.<ref>{{cite web |title=РГАСПИ, ф.17, оп.171, дело 411, лист 229 |url=https://stalin.memo.ru/lists/list247/ |website=Сталинские расстрельные списки (Stalin's Death Lists) |publisher=Memorial |access-date=18 May 2025}}</ref> He admitted the charges while interrogation, probably under torture, but denied them during his trial on 29 October 1937.<ref name="Zapiska">{{cite web |last1=Rudenko |first1=R.A. |title=Записка Р.А. Руденко в ЦК КПСС о реабилитации И.А. Акулова. 1 декабря 1954 г. |url=https://istmat.org/node/57884 |website=Реабилитация: как ето было. документы президиума ЦК КПСС и други материалы март 1953 – февраль 1956 |publisher=Международный фонд "демократия" |access-date=21 January 2023}}</ref> He was shot on 30 October 1937.<ref>{{cite web |title=Акулов Иван Алексеевич (1888) |url=https://ru.openlist.wiki/%D0%90%D0%BA%D1%83%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%98%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87_(1888) |website=Открытый список (Open List) |access-date=28 March 2022}}</ref>
Akulov was 'rehabilitated' in December 1954.<ref name="Zapiska" />
== Commemoration == thumb|The Soviet postage stamp commemorating the centenary of I. A. Akulov’s birth In 1988, the USSR issued a postage stamp dedicated to Akulov on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth.
A street in Vyborg is also named in his honor.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Документ. Решение Исполнительного комитета Выборгского городского Совета депутатов трудящихся от 25 апреля 1963 года о переименовании улицы Красной в улицу имени И.А. Акулова. 25.04.1963 г.|url=http://union.lenoblmus.ru/entity/OBJECT/160377|website=union.lenoblmus.ru|access-date=2025-11-28|language=ru}}</ref>
== References == {{Reflist}}
== Further reading == * Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War * Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union
==Bibliography== * {{cite book |last1=Medvedev |first1=Roy |title=Let History Judge, The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism |date=1976 |publisher=Spokesman |location=Nottingham }}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Akulov, Ivan}} Category:1888 births Category:1938 deaths Category:Politicians from Saint Petersburg Category:First secretaries of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan Category:Members of the Central Committee of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Category:Members of the Central Committee of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Category:Members of the Orgburo of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Category:Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Soviet Union) members Category:Old Bolsheviks Category:Great Purge victims from Russia