Iosif Nagovitsyn

Born Sept. 6 (18), 1888; died Nov. 21, 1937. Soviet state official. Became member of the Communist Party in 1905.

Nagovitsyn was born in the village of Omutnitsa, Viatka Province. The son of a peasant, he enrolled at the Viatka Agricultural School in 1904 and joined a Social Democratic circle; he was expelled from school in 1905 for participation in a student strike. From 1905 to 1907 he engaged in party work in Viatka (now Kirov), Glazov, and Ekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk); he then became a member of the Ufa-Kyshtym district committee of the RSDLP. Arrested in 1907 and exiled to Eniseisk Province in 1908, Nagovitsyn emigrated in 1913. He lived in Belgium, France, and Great Britain and was active in Bolshevik organizations abroad.

Upon his return to Russia in late 1918, Nagovitsyn was attached to the La. M. Sverdlov Communist University. In 1919 he became the head of the Votyak Commissariat, a department of the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities. After 1921 he served as chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Udmurt Autonomous Oblast, chairman of the executive committee of the oblast soviet, and a member of the bureau of the oblast committee of the RCP (Bolshevik).

Nagovitsyn served as a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR and as chairman of the Council for the Education of National Minorities in 192526. He was people’s commissar of social insurance of the RSFSR from 1926. Nagovitsyn was a delegate to the Tenth, Thirteenth, and Fifteenth through Seventeenth Party Congresses.