Mikhail Aleksandrovich Medvedev (Kudrin) (September 30, 1891 – January 13, 1964) was a Russian revolutionary, Chekist, direct participant in the execution of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his family, and close associates in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg on the night of July 17, 1918.

Quick Facts Born, Died ...

Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin
Born	(1891-09-30)30 September 1891 Dedyukhino, Sarapulsky Uyezd, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	13 January 1964(1964-01-13) (aged 72) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Allegiance	Russian SFSR  Soviet Union
Service/branch	Cheka NKVD
Rank	Colonel (NKVD)
Battles/wars	Russian Civil War

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Mikhail Kudrin was born in the village of Dedyukhino in the Sarapul District, into a Russian peasant family. In 1900 he graduated from the parish school in the village of Izgar, and from 1900 to 1908 he lived in Chistopol, where he began to study at the school of artisan students, but after the second grade he was forced to leave school due to the difficult financial situation of the family.

In 1908, Kudrin moved to Perm, where he worked at a power plant, then as a locksmith at an oil warehouse, and finally as an oiler on a tugboat. In September 1911, he left for Baku, where he got a job in the engine crew of a tanker in the Caspian Sea and joined the "Union of Non-Industrial Workers" and met the Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1912, Kudrin joined the RSDLP and plunged headfirst into party work. In 1912, he became a member of the illegal Bolshevik "Trade Union of Seamen of the Caspian Merchant Fleet". In February 1914, Kudrin was arrested, along with a group of Baku Bolsheviks, and until September 1916 was held in a Baku prison. After having freed himself, he received a passport from the Bolshevik underground in the name of "Mikhail Sidorov", went into hiding, and returned to Perm.

In the summer of 1917 following the February Revolution, Medvedev, at the invitation of an old acquaintance from the Baku underground, came to Yekaterinburg and got a job at a power plant. After the creation of the local soviet at the plant, he became its secretary, and later, was elected its chairman.

When the topic of the search for the remains of the imperial family was not yet discussed, Medvedev left behind a commentary that, according to some, makes it possible to doubt the belonging of the remains found in July 1991 in the vicinity of Yekaterinburg to the Tsar and his family.

"In 1961, at the editorial office of the Ural Worker newspaper, where my father worked, there was a meeting with a participant in the events, Mikhail Medvedev” recalls S.V. Ilyichev. "He told how the next day after the murder, traces were destroyed: naked bodies were doused with sulfuric acid, and then dismembered, doused with gasoline and burned at the stake. What was left was then dumped into an old mine. Medvedev tried to find it in 1946, but could not: he said that over time the ridge was covered with vegetation".^[5][6] A similar claim was made by Pyotr Voykov. However, a DNA analysis published on 17 July 2018 verified the authenticity of the remains as being those of Nicholas II and his family members.^[7]

He was not related to fellow executioner Pavel Medvedev.