Ivan Ivanovich Gaza

Born Jan. 5 (17), 1894, in Petersburg; died May 10, 1933, in Leningrad. Soviet party and military figure. Became a member of the Communist Party in 1917.

Gaza was the son of a worker and in 1909 began working as a metal craftsman in the Putilov factory. In February 1916 he was sent to penal barracks for organizing a strike. He carried on revolutionary work among the soldiers and sailors of Oranienbaum and incited them to combat in the days of the February Revolution of 1917. He participated in the formation of detachments of the Red Guard in the Putilov factory and in the destruction of Kornilov’s rule. Beginning in August 1917 he was a deputy to the Petrograd Soviet. He took an active role in the October armed uprising in Petrograd and was one of the staff leaders of the uprising in Narva Raion. In 1918, Gaza became commissar of the V. I. Lenin Putilov Armored Train No. 6 and fought against the troops of Krasnov, Kornilov, Iudenich, and the White Poles. He was a military commissar of the Red Army until 1925. From 1925 he did party work in Leningrad and was secretary of the Leningrad city committee from 1931 to 1933. Gaza was a delegate to the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik). The former Staropetergof Prospekt was renamed in his honor. He is buried in Marsovo Pole in Leningrad.