Career
He was of Russian ethnicity and joined the Bolshevik Party in 1913. Syrtsov succeeded Alexei Rykov as the Chairman of the Council of People"s Commissars of the Russian SFSR, a position he held from 1929 to 1930. He was dismissed from this position as a result of the so-called Syrtsov-Lominadze affair ("Left-Right bloc").
He was arrested on 19 April 1937 during the Great Purge, sentenced to death on 10 September 1937 and executed the same day.