Vasilev-Iuzhin, Mikhail Ivanovich

Born Oct. 29 (Nov. 10), 1876; died Nov. 8, 1937. Soviet state and Party figure, publicist. Born in Piatigorsk into the family of a worker.

Vasil’ev-Iuzhin joined the Communist Party in 1898 and participated in the Revolution of 1905-07. In 1905, V. I. Lenin sent him to the rebellious battleship Potemkin, but he arrived in Odessa after the uprising had already been suppressed. He was a member of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP and participated in the creation of the Moscow soviet of workers’ deputies. From 1906 to 1917, Vasil’ev-Iuzhin conducted party work in Baku, St. Petersburg, and Saratov. He was a contributor to the Bolshevik newspapers Vpered and Proletarii. He was persecuted by the tsarist government. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was vice-chairman of the Saratov soviet and chairman of the Saratov Province Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). He was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (B). Vasil’ev-Iuzhin headed the October armed uprising of 1917 in Saratov. Beginning in January 1919 he was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs and a member of the Revolutionary Military Soviet of the Fifteenth Army, and then held high posts in bodies of the prosecutor’s office; he was vice-chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR from 1924 to 1937.