Lev Kamenev

Lev Kamenev
Lev Kamenev
Лев Каменев
	Kamenev, c. 1920s
Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union
	In office; 6 July 1923 – 16 January 1926
Premier	Vladimir Lenin; Alexey Rykov;
Director of the Lenin Institute of the Central Committee
	In office; 31 March 1923 – 1926
Preceded by	Post established
Succeeded by	Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov
Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets
	In office; 9 – 21 November 1917
Preceded by	Nikolai Chkheidze
Succeeded by	Yakov Sverdlov
Full member of the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th Politburo
	In office; 8 March 1919 – 1 January 1926
	In office; 10 October – 29 November 1917
Candidate member of the 14th Politburo
	In office; 1 January – 23 October 1926
Full member of the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th Central Committee
	In office; 17 January 1912 – 14 November 1927
Personal details
Born	Leo Rosenfeld; 18 July [O.S. 6 July] 1883; Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	25 August 1936 (aged 53); Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Cause of death	Execution by firing squad
Political party	RSDLP (1901–1903); RSDLP (Bolsheviks) (1903–1918); Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1918–1927, 1928–1932, 1933–1934);
Spouses	Olga Bronstein; Tatiana Glebova;
Alma mater	Moscow State University

Lev Borisovich Kamenev^[a] (né Rozenfeld;^[b] 18 July [O.S. 6 July] 1883 – 25 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. An Old Bolshevik, Kamenev was a leading figure in the early Soviet government, serving as the first head of state of the Russian SFSR as chairman of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and as a deputy premier of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1926, among other roles.

Born in Moscow to a family active in revolutionary politics, Kamenev joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1901 and sided with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction after the party's 1903 split. He was arrested several times and participated in the failed Revolution of 1905, after which he moved abroad and became one of Lenin's close associates. In 1914, he was arrested upon returning to Saint Petersburg and exiled to Siberia. He returned after the February Revolution of 1917, which overthrew the monarchy, and joined Grigory Zinoviev in opposing Lenin's "April Theses" and the armed seizure of power known as the October Revolution. Nevertheless, he briefly served as the de facto head of state as chairman of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and held a number of senior posts, including chairman of the Moscow Soviet and deputy premier under Lenin. In 1919, Kamenev was elected as a full member of the first Politburo.

During Lenin's final illness in 1923–1924, Kamenev formed a leadership troika with Zinoviev and Joseph Stalin which led to Leon Trotsky's downfall. Stalin subsequently turned against his former allies and ousted Kamenev from the Soviet leadership, after which Kamenev and Zinoviev aligned with Trotsky in the United Opposition against Stalin. Kamenev was removed from his positions in 1926 and expelled from the party in 1927, before submitting to Stalin's increasing power and rejoining the party the next year. He and Zinoviev were again expelled from the party in 1932, as a result of the Ryutin affair, and were re-admitted in 1933.

In 1934, Kamenev was arrested after the assassination of Sergei Kirov, accused of complicity in his killing, and sentenced to ten years in prison. He was later made a chief defendant in the Trial of the Sixteen (the show trial at the beginning of Stalin's Great Purge), found guilty of treason, and executed in August 1936.
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