Viktor Radus-Zenkovich

Born Dec. 31, 1877 (Jan. 12, 1878), in Arkhangel’sk; died Oct. 4, 1967, in Moscow. Soviet party and state official. Member of the CPSU from 1898. Son of a political exile.

Radus-Zen’kovich studied at Moscow University. He was exiled to Irkutsk Province in 1902, but he subsequently fled abroad and worked as a compositor at the Iskra printing press in Geneva. Upon returning to Russia in 1903, Radus-Zen’kovich was a member of RSDLP committees in Nikolaev, Baku, and Moscow and worked in the military organization of the RSDLP in St. Petersburg and Helsingfors. He was a delegate to the First Conference of the RSDLP in Tammerfors in 1905. In 1908 he was sentenced to hard labor. He served his term in the Butyrka Prison in Moscow and in 1913 was deported to Irkutsk Province. After the February Revolution of 1917, Radus-Zen’kovich engaged in party work in Minsk. Moving to Saratov in July, he became a member of the executive committee of the soviet and editor of the party organ Sotsial-Demokrat and Izvestiia Saratovskogo soveta.

Radus-Zen’kovich was deputy people’s commissar of labor of the RSFSR in 1918 and from 1930 to 1933. In 1919–20 he was chief of agitation and propaganda for the provincial committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) and chairman of the provincial executive committee in Saratov. He served from 1920 to 1922 as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Kirghiz (Kazakh) ASSR and secretary of the Kirghiz Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(B). Radus-Zen’kovich was a member of the Central Control Commission of the RCP(B) from 1923 and a candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission of the ACP (Bolshevik) from 1926 to 1930. He served as chairman of the Central Control Commission of the CP (Bolshevik) and people’s commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection in Byelorussia from 1925 to 1927. From 1933 to 1937 he was chairman of the Central Committee of the Trade Union of Communications Workers. He engaged in scholarly work from 1938 and was an employee of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism from 1940.

Radus-Zen’kovich was a delegate to the Twelfth through Seventeenth and Twenty-second Party Congresses and a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. He retired with a special pension in 1956. Radus-Zen’kovich was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Badge of Honor, and several medals.