Pavel Tcacenco

(also Pavel Dmitrievich Tkachenko; real name Iakov Iakovlevich Antipov). Born Apr. 7, 1901, at Novo-savitskaia Station, now in Slobodzeia Raion, Moldavian SSR; died Sept. 5,1926, in Kishinev. Figure in the Moldavian and Rumanian workers’ movement, one of the leaders of the Communist organizations of Bessarabia and Rumania.

The son of a railroad employee, Tcacenco began his revolutionary activity in 1915 in Bendery; he took part in the revolutionary movement in Petrograd, where he entered the university in 1916. He joined the Red Guards in August 1917 and became a member of the RCP(B) in 1918. Elected to the Bessarabian underground party committee in October 1919, Tcacenco became its secretary in 1920. He was sentenced to death in absentia by a Rumanian tribunal in 1921. In March 1921 he helped prepare for and conduct the Jassy conference of the Bessarabian Bolshevik Organization and the Communist groups of the “Old Kingdom” (prewar Rumania), Transylvania, Dobruja, Bucovina, and the Banat. At this conference, Tcacenco was elected to the provisional central committee of the Rumanian Communist Party (RCP). He became a member of the Central Committee of the RCP in 1924. He was arrested in 1926 and killed by the Rumanian political police.