Sokolovskaia, Sofia Ivanovna

(party pseudonym Elena Kirillovna Svetlova). Born Mar. 29 (Apr. 10), 1894, Odessa; died Aug. 26, 1938. A participant in the struggle for Soviet power in the Ukraine. Member of the Communist Party from 1915.

The daughter of a lawyer, Sokolovskaia studied at a women’s medical institute in St. Petersburg from 1912 and at the Bestu-zhev Courses from 1914. In 1917 she was a member of the Chernigov provincial committee of the RSDLP(B) and the provincial revolutionary committee, and in 1918 she was chairman of the Chernigov soviet. After the occupation of the Ukraine by German troops, she was a member of the Chernigov underground provincial committee of the party, chairman of the provincial revolutionary committee, a member of the Kiev underground provincial committee of the party, and secretary first of the provincial revolutionary committee and then of the oblast committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine. She was a delegate to the First and Second Congresses of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine. From November 1918, Sokolovskaia was secretary of the Odessa underground oblast committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine, editor of the newspaper Kommunist, and an organizer and leader of the oblast committee’s Foreign Board, which conducted revolutionary propaganda among the interventionist troops. She was twice arrested by the White Guards but escaped each time. Beginning in December 1919, she first worked on the Executive Committee of the Comintern and then held party posts in Moscow.

Sokolovskaia was deputy director and director of Mosfil’m from 1935. A delegate to the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Congresses of the ACP(B), she was elected a member of the Central Control Commission at the Sixteenth Congress.