Jānis Rudzutaks was a Latvian Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

 revolutionary and Soviet politician.

Rudzutaks was born in the Kuldīga

Kuldiga

Kuldīga is a town in western Latvia. It is the center of Kuldīga municipality with a population of approximately 13,500.Kuldīga was first mentioned in 1242. It joined the Hanseatic League in 1368...

 district of the Courland Governorate

Courland Governorate

Courland Governorate, also known as the Province of Courland, Governorate of Kurland , and Government of Courland , was one of the Baltic governorates of the Russian Empire, that is now part of the Republic of Latvia....

 (present-day Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

), into the family of a farm worker. In 1903, he started working in a factory in Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

. Two years later, he joined Latvian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1907, Rudzutaks was arrested and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor. He served a part of his sentence in Riga and was then transferred to Butyrka prison

Butyrka prison

Butyrka prison was the central transit prison in pre-Revolutionary Russia, located in Moscow.The first references to Butyrka prison may be traced back to the 17th century. The present prison building was erected in 1879 near the Butyrsk gate on the site of a prison-fortress which had been built...

 in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. Rudzutaks was released after the February Revolution

February Revolution

The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...

 of 1917.

After his release, Rudzutaks served in various positions in the All-Russia Communist Party

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...

, Soviet system and labor unions. He became a close friend and working associate of Vladimir Lenin. From 1920 to 1921, he was the secretary general of All-Russia Central Council of Labor Unions. From 1922 to 1923, Rudzutaks was the chairman of Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

n bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Russia Communist Party and, from 1923 to 1924, a secretary of the Central Committee. From 1924 until 1934, he was the People's Commissar (i.e., minister) for transportation. In 1926, Rudzutaks was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (the equivalent of Deputy Premier) and held this position until 1937.

Rudzutaks was a member of the Central Committee of All-Russia Communist Party from 1920 until 1937, a candidate member of the Politburo from 1923 to 1926 and from 1934 to 1937 and a full member of the Politburo from 1926 to 1932.

On May 24, 1937, Rudzutaks was arrested on Stalin's orders. He was accused of Trotskyism

Trotskyism

Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...

 and espionage for Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

, and sentenced to death after a trial, which unlike the well-known Moscow Trials

Moscow Trials

The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...

, received very little publicity. He was shot by the NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

 in 1938, and there was a wall of silence surrounding him after this death. In 1956, Rudzutaks's case was re-examined. As a result, he was exonerated

Rehabilitation (Soviet)

Rehabilitation in the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal...

 and his Communist Party membership was posthumously restored.

The memoirs of another Bolshevik, Anastas Mikoyan

Anastas Mikoyan

Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....

, mention that, before the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, Lenin proposed Rudzutaks as a replacement for Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 as the secretary general of the Communist Party. If true, this would have undoubtedly contributed to Stalin's determination for eliminating Rudzutaks. While Lenin's criticism of Stalin is well known from the Lenin's Testament

Lenin's Testament

Lenin's Testament is the name given to a document written by Vladimir Lenin in the last weeks of 1922 and the first week of 1923. In the testament, Lenin proposed changes to the structure of the Soviet governing bodies...

, Mikoyan's memoirs are the only source mentioning Rudzutaks as the possible replacement for Stalin.