Antselovich, Naum Markovich

Born Apr. 7 (19), 1888, in St. Petersburg; died Sept. 15, 1952, in Moscow. Soviet state, Party, and trade union figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1905. He was born into the family of a carpenter and worked as an electrician.

Antselovich conducted party work in the Ukraine and the Crimea and was a member of the Southern Bureau of the RSDLP in 1912. He underwent arrest and exile. After the February Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the executive committee of the Petrograd Trade Union Council. He was a delegate to the seventh (April) conference of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). He was one of the organizers of the Red Guard in Petrograd, a member of the Petrograd Revolutionary War Committee, and commissar in charge of the provisioning organizations. In 1918 he was a member of the executive committee of the Petrograd soviet, member of the bureau of the Petrograd Party committee, and chairman of the Petrograd Trade Union Council. During the Civil War he did political work in the Red Army. He served as chairman of the central committee of the Union of Land and Forest Workers from 1923 to 1931, deputy peoples’ commissar of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate from 1931 to 1934, vice-chairman of the Soviet Control Commission from 1934 to 1938, and USSR people’s commissar of the lumber industry from 1938 to 1940. He conducted political work in the Soviet Army in 1941–45. He was USSR deputy minister of trade after 1945. He was a delegate to the Ninth and the Twelfth through the Eighteenth Party Congresses. From 1927 to 1934 he was an alternate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) and after 1938 a member of the Central Committee. He had been elected to the All-Russian and All-Union Central Executive Committees and to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and was a deputy to the first convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.