Ivan Kolomiitsev

Born Dec. 10 (22), 1896, in the village of Vorontsovo-Nikolaevskoe, Stavropol’ Province; died Aug. 27, 1919. Soviet political figure. Son of a peasant.

Kolomiitsev participated in revolutionary circles while a Gymnasium student. He was in military service from 1916. Kolomiitsev joined the Bolshevik party in 1917 at the second krai congress of the Caucasian Army. He became a member and executive secretary of the Enzeli revolutionary committee in January 1918. In July 1918 upon the recommendation of the Baku council of people’s commissars and with Lenin’s agreement he was appointed head of the first Soviet diplomatic mission to Iran. The pro-British government that assumed office in Iran in August 1918 did not recognize Kolomiitsev’s credentials. The mission in Tehran was sacked in November 1918, but Kolomiitsev managed to escape to Astrakhan. He arrived in Moscow in June 1919.

On June 28 he was assigned the mission of delivering the “Appeal of the Government of the RSFSR to the Government and People of Persia” and departed for a second time to Iran as head of the Soviet Extraordinary Diplomatic Mission. On his way to his destination, he was seized on Iranian territory by White Guards and shot. On May 24, 1924, Kolomiitsev’s remains were transferred to the Soviet consulate in Asterabad, Iran (present-day city of Gorgan). A monument was erected on his grave.