Vinokurov, Aleksandr

Born Aug. 27 (Sept. 8), 1869, in Ekaterinoslav, now Dnepropetrovsk; died Nov. 9, 1944, in Moscow. Soviet Party and state figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1893. Son of a finance department functionary. Vinokurov graduated from the medical department of Moscow University in 1894. He joined the revolutionary movement in 1890 and was a cofounder of the social-democratic organization in Moscow in 1893 and in Ekaterinoslav in 1895. He was repeatedly subject to arrest and exile. Vinokurov conducted Party work in Ekaterinoslav in 1905 and in St. Petersburg beginning in 1908. He was an editor of the magazine Voprosy strakhovaniia (Problems of Insurance; 1913-17).

In 1917, Vinokurov was deputy to the Petrograd State Duma; after October he was chairman of the first Bolshevik Petrograd State Duma, chairman of the Council of Doctors’ Collegiums, which created the system of Soviet public health, and a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Labor. He was People’s Commissar of Social Security during 1918-21. During 1921-24 he worked in the Commission for Combating Hunger. From 1924 to 1938, Vinokurov was the chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR and a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. After 1938 he worked in the People’s Commissariat of Public Health of the USSR.