Avel Safronovich Enukidze

(party pseudonyms: Avel’, Abdul, and “Zolotaia rybka” [“Little Goldfish”]). Born May 7 (19), 1877; died Oct. 30, 1937. Prominent Soviet party and government figure. Became a member of the Communist Party in 1898. The son of a peasant from the village of Tskhadisi, Kutaisi Province.

In 1897, Enukidze graduated from the secondary engineering school in Tbilisi. From 1897 to 1900 he worked in the central railroad shops of the Transcaucasian Railroad and then as a fireman in Baku. In 1900 he was one of the founders of the Social Democratic organization in Baku and a member of the Baku committee of the RSDLP. He helped to set up the underground printing press k ‘Nina” and worked for it. Party work took him to Baku, Rostov-on-Don, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. He was repeatedly arrested and in 1914 was sent into exile to the Turukhansk region. While in exile he was drafted into military service in late 1916. During the February Revolution of 1917 he took part in the revolutionary actions of the troops in Petrograd. At the first congress of Soviets he was elected as a Bolshevik delegate to the Ail-Russian Central Executive Committee. In June 1917 he became a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. He took part in the October armed uprising and was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and a delegate to the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

After the October revolution and until the autumn of 1918, Enukidze was the head of the military section of the Ail-Russian Central Executive Committee. In October 1918 he became a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, later becoming the secretary of the Presidium. After the First Congress of Soviets of the USSR, in December 1922, he became a member and the secretary of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. He was a delegate to the Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Eleventh through Seventeenth Congresses of the party. At the Thirteenth through Sixteenth Congresses he was elected a member of the Central Control Commission; at the Seventeenth Congress, in 1934, he was elected to the Central Committee of the ACP (Bolshevik). He was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.