Sultan Medzhid Efendiev

Born May 26, 1887, in the city of Shemakha, in what is now the Azerbaijan SSR; died Apr. 21, 1938. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1904.

Born into a petit bourgeois family, Efendiev graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Kazan in 1915 and became a physician. In 1902 he joined the revolutionary movement in Azerbaijan. He helped organize the Social Democratic group Gummet in 1904, and he took part in the Revolution of 1905–07.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Efendiev served as a member of the Baku soviet, of the local Gummet committee, and of the Baku committee of the RSDLP(B). Beginning in 1918 he took part in the defense of Astrakhan. In 1918 he became commissar for the affairs of Muslims in Transcaucasia (a post in the People’s Commissariat of Nationality Affairs of the RSFSR) and deputy chairman of the Central Bureau of Communist Organizations of the Peoples of the East under the Central Committee of the RCP(B). In 1920 and 1921, Efendiev served as a member of the executive committee of the Baku soviet, extraordinary commissioner of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Azerbaijan, and commissar of Gandzha Province.

From 1921 to 1924, in addition to serving on the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan SSR, Efendiev was people’s commissar for agriculture and people’s commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of the republic. From 1924 to 1927 he was chairman of the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Azerbaijan. He became deputy chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Azerbaijan SSR in 1927 and chairman in 1931; in the same year he was named one of the chairmen of the Central Executive Committee of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic.

From 1924 to 1927, Efendiev served on the Central Control Commission of the ACP(B). Efendiev was a member of the Transcaucasian Krai Committee of the ACP(B), the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Azerbaijan, and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.