Ian Petrovich Krastyn

(Jan Krastyņš). Born Aug. 4 (16), 1890, in Riga. Soviet historian. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR (1951).

Born into a working-class family, Krastyn’ joined the revolutionary movement in 1905. In 1912 he became a member of the Communist Party. In April 1916 he was arrested, and in January 1917 he was sentenced to life exile in Siberia. He was liberated during the February Revolution of 1917. Persecuted by the German occupiers, in 1918 he went to Soviet Russia. From 1918 to 1923 he worked for the Cheka; and from 1923 to 1927 he engaged in party work. In 1930 he graduated from the Institute of the Red Professoriat in Moscow. From 1930 to 1933 he worked in the executive committee of the Comintern. From 1933 to 1940, he was in the International Agrarian Institute, and from 1940 to 1950, in the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

In 1950, Krastyn’ became senior research worker and chief of the section of modern and contemporary history at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR. His principal works deal with the history of the revolutionary and national-liberation movement in Latvia, including History of the Latvian SSR (vol. 2, 1954). He compiled and edited many collections of documents. In 1952 he was awarded the State Prize of the USSR for his monograph The Revolution of 1905–07 in Latvia (Russian edition, 1952). In 1970 he won the State Prize of the Latvian SSR for his book Essays on the Economic History of Latvia: 1900–1917. He has been awarded the Order of Lenin, three other orders, and a number of medals.