Popov, Leon Khristoforovich

Born Sept. 4 (16), 1881, in Akkerman, now Belgorod-Dnestrovskii in Odessa Oblast; died Dec. 15, 1919; buried in the city of Ishim. One of the organizers of the Soviet Red Cross. Member of the Communist Party.

Popov graduated from the medical faculty of Novorossiia University in Odessa in 1910. From 1915 to 1917 he headed the Bolshevik organization of the committee of the Red Cross of the Western Front. In 1917 he was chairman of the war front committee of the Red Cross and simultaneously a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Western Region and Front. From October 1917 through February 1918 he was editor in chief of Izvestiia Krasnogo Kresta.

Popov was chairman of the Central Collegium of the Russian Society of the Red Cross from July to November 1918 and was a member of the All-Russian Epidemiological Commission from June 1918 to July 1919. In September 1918 he founded Izvestiia Tsk ROKK and was its first editor in chief. Popov died of typhus on the Eastern Front. In 1973 an ocean liner was named after Popov.