Kaminskii, Grigoriinaumovich

Born Oct. 20 (Nov. 1), 1895; died Feb. 10, 1938. Soviet statesman and party figure; one of the organizers of Soviet health care. Joined the Communist Party in 1913.

The son of a blacksmith, Kaminskii was born in Ekaterinoslav (present-day Dnepropetrovsk). He studied in the department of medicine of Moscow University and took an active part in the student revolutionary movement. In 1917 he became a member of the Moscow oblast bureau of the RSDLP(B) and secretary of the Tula committee of the party. From 1918 to 1920 he was the chairman of the Tula provincial committee of the RSDLP(B) and of the provincial executive committee and a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Second Army. In 1920 he became secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(B) of Azerbaijan and chairman of the Baku soviet of working people’s and Red Army deputies. From 1922 to 1929 he was chairman of the Central Committee of the trade unions of Vserabotzemles (All-Russian Production Union of Farm and Forestry Workers), deputy chairman of the board of the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, and chairman of the collective farm center. He became secretary of the Moscow city committee of the ACP(B) in 1930 and, in 1932, chairman of the Moscow oblast executive committee. He was people’s commissar for health care of the RSFSR and chief public health inspector of the USSR from 1934 to 1936 and people’s commissar for health care of the USSR in 1936–37.

Government decisions on the training of doctors and secondary medical personnel, the fight against malaria, the medical industry, the work of the Ail-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine, and the advancement of medical science were developed and adopted on Kaminskii’s initiative. He was a delegate to the Sixth, Eighth, Eleventh, Thirteenth, and Seventeenth Congresses of the party. He was elected candidate member of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) at the Fourteenth and Seventeenth Congresses. He was also a member of the All-Union Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.