Lander, Karl Ivanovich

Born Apr. 5, 1883, in the volost (small rural district) of Vērgale, now Liepāja Raion; died July 29, 1937. Soviet statesman and party figure. Became a member of the Communist Party in 1905.

As an external student, Lander passed exams for the title of people’s teacher. He did party work in Latvia, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Samara, and Nizhny Novgorod and fought on the barricades in Moscow in December 1905. He was repeatedly arrested. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was a member of the Minsk and Northwestern oblast committees of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). In October 1917 he was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Western Front and chairman of the Minsk soviet. After the victory of the October Revolution of 1917 he was chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Zapadnyi Oblast and Western Front. He was a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In 1918–19 he was people’s commissar for state control of the RSFSR and plenipotentiary of the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) for mobilizing and adjusting work in Minsk and Smolensk provinces. In 1920 he was special plenipotentiary of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (All-Russian Cheka) for the Northern Caucasus and director of the special department of the Caucasus Front. In 1921 he was manager of the agitation and propaganda section of the Moscow committee of the RCP(B). He was a plenipotentiary of the Soviet government in 1922–23 at foreign missions aiding the starving in Russia. From 1923 to 1925 he was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade. From 1928 on he was on a special pension. He engaged in scholarly literary activity.