Nikolai Mikhailovich Ianson

Born Dec. 6, 1882, in St. Petersburg; died June 20, 1938. Soviet party and state figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1905.

The son of a worker, Ianson became a metalworker in 1901. He took part in the Revolution of 1905–07 in St. Petersburg, Poland, and Estonia. In 1907 he emigrated to the USA, where he served as secretary of the Federation of Estonian Workers of the Socialist Party of the USA. In June 1917, Ianson moved to Revel (Tallinn), where he served as a member of the city committee of the party and the north Baltic regional bureau of the RSDLP(B). He helped establish Soviet power in Estonia.

In 1918, Ianson took up economic and trade union work. In 1923 he became secretary of the Central Control Commission of the ACP(B), and from 1927 to 1930 he was secretary of the Party Collegium of the Central Control Commission. From 1925 to 1928 he was deputy people’s commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of the USSR. In 1928 he became people’s commissar of justice, and in 1930 and 1931 he was deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR. From 1931 to 1934, Ianson served as people’s commissar of water transport of the USSR. In 1934 he became assistant head of the Administration of the Northern Sea Route.

Ianson was a delegate to the Ninth and the Twelfth through Sixteenth Party Congresses. He was elected a member of the Central Control Commission at the Twelfth through Sixteenth Congresses and a member of the Central Auditing Commission of the ACP(B) at the Seventeenth Congress. From 1923 to 1934 he was a member of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission. Ianson was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.