be known as the Ural-Siberian method of grain procurement, which was based upon use of Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR in charging peasants as "speculatorsa" for refusing to sell grain to state authorities despite the inadequate purchase prices being offered. In the aftermath of the so-called "extraordinary measures" employed the 1928 grain procurement Syrtsov was a consistent supporter of Stalin's proposal for "total collectivization" and the "liquidation of kulaks as a class" in the Siberian Oblast Committee of the VKP(b) as a long-term solution to the problem of inadequate state grain collections. Syrtsov's loyalty on the question of collectivization of agriculture was rewarded in 1929 when he was returned from Novosibirsk to Moscow to assume chairmanship of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR Syrtsov replaced collectivization opponent Alexey Rykov in this position, and seems to have been tapped to ultimately replacing Rykov as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (CPC) of the entire nation. In connection with the move Syrtsov was made a candidate member of the Politburo of the by now renamed All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [VKP(b)], a move which likely emphasized the designs of Stalin and his associates to promote Syrtsov as Chairman of the All-Union CPC. Syrtsov thereby became the youngest member of the Politburo both in terms of age and duration of party membership. He was also made a member of the Council of Labor and Defense (STO), a key economic planning and distribution agency, in July 1929. Syrtsov-Lominadze Affair of 1930 Syrtsov's tenure as head of the Russian government proved to be brief. The campaign for total collectivization of agriculture in the USSR proved to be dysfunctionally violent, marked by expropriations, forced deportations, and armed revolt. These excesses moved the decisive and independently minded Syrtsov into opposition, gathering like-minded individuals in the upper ranks of the Communist Party apparatus characterized by historian James Hughes as an "amateurish political plot to oust Stalin" for the violence and economic irrationality. In this effort Syrtsov was joined by fellow member of the VKP(b) Central Committee and Secretary of the Transcaucasian District Party Committee Vissarion "Beso" Lominadze and Central Control Commission member Lazar Shatskin, an important figure in the Communist International of Youth (KIM). The so-called Syrtsov-Lominadze Group planned to make their restructuring proposal at the forthcoming joint plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission, scheduled for October 1930.