Lev Stepanovich Shaumian

Born Apr. 25, 1904, in Tbilisi; died May 24, 1971, in Moscow. Soviet journalist. Member of the CPSU from 1919. Son of S. G. Shaumian.

L. S. Shaumian studied at the Ia. M. Sverdlov Communist University in 1922 and 1923. He graduated from the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the ACP(B) in 1948.

During the struggle of the Baku Commune against the Turkish interventionists in June and July 1918, L. S. Shaumian fought in a workers’ dmzhina (armed detachment). After the fall of Soviet power in Baku, he was arrested in September 1918 by counterrevolutionaries and imprisoned together with the Baku Commissars. In 1919 and 1920 he conducted underground party work in Baku and Tbilisi.

Between 1924 and 1932, Shaumian engaged in party work in Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd) and Rostov-on-Don. Between 1932 and 1946 he headed the editorial staffs of a number of newspapers; he was managing editor of Ural’skii rabochii from 1941 to 1946. In 1949 he joined the staff of the Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia Publishing House; in 1954 he became a member of the Chief Editorial Board of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and the encyclopedia’s deputy editor in chief.

Shaumian was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.