Nazaretian, Amaiak Markarovich

Born Nov. 17 (29), 1889, in Tbilisi; died Oct. 30, 1937. Participant in the revolutionary movement in Russia; Soviet party figure. Became a member of the Communist Party in 1905.

The son of a merchant, Nazaretian began his studies in the faculty of law of the University of St. Petersburg in 1909. In 1911 he was arrested and exiled to Tbilisi. He emigrated to Geneva, where he worked in the Bolshevik organization.

In 1913, Nazaretian resumed party work in Russia. In 1917 and 1918 he was a member of the Tiflis committee and the Caucasian Krai Committee of the Party. In April 1918 he became people’s commissar of labor and deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Terek Soviet Republic. In 1919 he helped organize partisan detachments in Georgia. Between 1920 and 1922, he was a member and secretary of the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (B) and a member of the Revolutionary Committee of Georgia; he later became a member of the Central Committee of the CP (B) of Georgia. In 1922–23 he was head of the bureau of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the RCP (B), at the same time serving on the editorial board of Pravda. Between 1924 and 1930 he was secretary of the Transcaucasian Krai Committee of the ACP (B) and also served simultaneous terms as chairman of the Central Control Commission and of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of the Transcaucasian Federation (Transcaucasian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic). Nazaretian was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of the USSR from 1931 to 1934. He was a delegate to the Eleventh, Thirteenth through Fifteenth, and Seventeenth Congresses of the CPSU. At the Thirteenth through Fifteenth Congresses, he was elected to the Central Control Commission and to the commission’s presidium; at the Seventeenth Congress he was elected to the Soviet Control Commission.