Aleksei Stetskii

Stesky was born to the family of a petty official. From 1915 he studied at the Petrograd Polytechnic University and joined the Bolshevik Party in the same year. He did not graduated from the university because of his expulsion due to revolutionary activity.

During the February Revolution of 1917, he was an agitator of the Petersburg Party Committee, then secretary of the factory committee, and member of the Vyborg District Party Committee. Delegate of the VI Congress of the Russian Communist Party (b). Stesky was a participant of the October uprising in Petrograd and the suppression of the Kerensky-Krasnov rebellion. From 1918 to 1920 he worked in military-political and staff of the Red Army .

After the Civil War he studied at the Institute of Red Professors and worked in the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party. From 1925 he also was an editor of the Komsomolskaya Pravda. After the death of Lenin he became a supporter of Nikolai Bukharin's Right Opposition however he later became an ally of Joseph Stalin.

From 1930 to 1934 he was head of the Department of Culture and Propaganda. He was also a member of the organizing committee of the Union of Soviet Writers which was nominally under the chairmanship of Maxim Gorky however Stesky was the de facto leader of the union and in charge of all its affairs.

In 1935 he became chief editor of the magazine Kommunist. During the mide 30s he lead many propaganda campaigns against enemies of the state most notably Trotskyists, Zinovievists, kulaks and other groups.

He was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the Central Committee elected by the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Orgburo. He was head of the Leninist Culture and Propaganda Department (Agitprop) from February 10, 1934 to May 13, 1935. During the Great Purge, he was arrested on April 26, 1938 on charges of counter-revolution and later executed by firing squad.

After the death of Joseph Stalin, by the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.

• Przewodnik po historii Partii Komunistycznej i ZSRR (ros.)
• http://az-libr.ru/index.htm?Persons&0B5/84e77bbb/0001/ceb6f017 (ros.)
• "Стецкий Алексей Иванович" (in Russian). ХРОНОС: ВСЕМИРНАЯ ИСТОРИЯ В ИНТЕРНЕТЕ. Retrieved 2016-01-30.
• http://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/martirolog/?t=page&id=17131 (ros.)