Pyotr Krasikov

Pyotr Krasikov was involved in revolutionary politics beginning in 1891, after graduating from the Krasnoyarsk gymnasium

In the years 1892 - 1893 he visited Switzerland and met with Russian Marxists, met with the leaders of the "Emancipation of Labor" group of Georgy Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod and Vera Zasulich and joined Emancipation of Labour group in 1892. After returning home in 1894, he was arrested and kept in a solitary confinement sell in the Peter and Paul Fortress until he was bailed out by his sister.

In 1895 despite the police supervision, Krasikov managed to create the first Marxist circle in Krasnoyarsk among students of the paramedic and midwife school.

In 1895, Lenin came to Krasnoyarsk and met Krasikov and became close to each other.

Together with Lenin, he took part in meetings with political exiles who lived in Krasnoyarsk or who stopped here in transit. He saw Lenin's comrades in the Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. And after their departure, he met many party exiles and helped them.

For correspondence and communication with political exiles Krasikov was extended the period of public supervision of the police for another year. He later choose Pskov as his residing place and joined the local Iskra-ist. He was involved in the illegal transportation of Iskra from Germany to Russia. He was on trial in Germany, where Karl Liebknecht defended him. He was convicted but again released on bail.

Later he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party In 1903, at the II Congress of the RSDLP , together with Lenin and Plekhanov , he was a member of the Bureau of the Congress.

In 1905, Krasikov was in charge of the agitation department of the Petersburg Party Committee. At the III Congress of the RSDLP he was a delegate with an advisory voice.[2]

After the 1917 Russian Revolution his positions were related to legal issues and he is considered to be among the principal creators of the Soviet legal system, along with Andrey Vyshinsky. He was Deputy People's Commissar of Justice since 1918, Prosecutor General of the Supreme Court since 1924, and Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court from 1933 to 1938.[3]

Krasikov died in 1939. He was one of the few Old Bolsheviks who died of natural causes.

Israel Getzler, in Martov: A Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat (Cambridge U.P., 1967, p. 74), says he was "intensely disliked by all and sundry [with the exception of Lenin]... [Boris Nikolaevsky] sums him up as a drunken brawler... J. Steinberg, Als ich Volkskommisar war (Munich, 1929), has devoted an entire chapter... to Krasikov's misdeeds as co-chairman (together with the notorious M. Iu. Kozlovsky) of the Cheka of the Petrograd Soviet in the winter of 1917-18."[4]