Saak Ter-Gabrielian

Born Feb. 15 (27), 1886, in the city of Shusha, in what is now the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, Azerbaijan SSR; died Aug. 19, 1937. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1902.

Ter-Gabrielian was the son of a tailor. He fought in the Revolution of 1905–07 in Baku and was a member of a committee of the RSDLP. Beginning in 1907, he conducted party work in trade unions in Baku and helped found the Union of Petroleum Industry Employees. He was arrested on several occasions. After the February Revolution of 1917, Ter-Gabrielian became a member of the presidium of the Baku soviet. During the period of the Baku Commune of 1918, he was commissar of petroleum and a chairman of the local Extraordinary Commission. In 1918 and 1919 he was a member of the collegium of the Main Petroleum Committee and carried out tasks from the People’s Commissariat of the RSFSR to supply industrial enterprises and the army with petroleum products.

From January to March 1919, Ter-Gabrielian was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Twelfth Army of the Caspian-Caucasian Front. In 1920 he became a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee and the Revolutionary Committee of Armenia. He became the permanent representative of the Armenian SSR to the RSFSR in 1921 and from 1923 to 1928 was a representative of the Transcaucasian Federation to the People’s Commissariat of the USSR. From 1928 to 1935 he was chairman of the People’s Commissariat of the Armenian SSR. He was a member of the bureau of the Central Committee of the CP(B) of Armenia and a member of the Transcaucasian Krai Committee.

Ter-Gabrielian was a delegate to the Tenth and Twelfth through Seventeenth Congresses of the ACP(B). He was a member of the All-Union Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and a candidate member of the presidia of both committees.