Zevin, Iakov

Born June 9 (21), 1888, in Krasnopol’e, in present-day Mogilev Oblast; died Sept. 20, 1918. Active figure in the Russian revolutionary movement. Member of the RSDLP (1904).

Zevin did underground revolutionary work in Ekaterinoslav, Baku, and other cities. He was arrested and exiled several times (to Vologda and Arkhangel’sk Provinces and Eastern Siberia). In 1911 he studied at the party school organized by V. I. Lenin at Longjumeau (near Paris). He was a delegate to the Sixth (Prague) Conference of the RSDLP (1912), where he represented a group of Menshevik Party members. After the conference Zevin completely sided with the Bolshevik party.

In 1915 he was a member of the Baku Committee of Bolsheviks. After the Revolution of February 1917, Zevin worked in the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ Deputies and carried out tasks for the Moscow District Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). In August 1917 he returned to Baku in the Union of Petroleum Industry Workers. Zevin was one of the leaders in the struggle to establish Soviet power in Azerbaijan. He was commissar of labor in the Baku Council of People’s Commissars (from April 1918); he implemented the most important socialist measures of the Soviet power. After the temporary fall of Soviet power in Baku (July 31, 1918), Zevin was arrested and shot as one of the Twenty-six Baku Commissars.