Elena Rozmirovich

Born Feb. 26 (Mar. 10), 1886, in Petropavlovka, in what is now Dnepropetrovsk Oblast; died Aug. 30, 1953, in Moscow. Soviet party and state figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1904.

Daughter of a member of the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry), Rozmirovich engaged in party work in Kiev beginning in 1904, was arrested in 1909, and was expelled from Russia in 1910. While living in France and Austria, she carried out assignments of the Central Committee Bureau Abroad. She was a delegate to the Basel Congress of the Second International (1912) and, with other party workers, attended the Kraków and Poronino conferences of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (1913). In 1913 and 1914, Rozmirovich was secretary of the Bolshevik faction in the Fourth State Duma and of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP; at the same time, she was a member of the editorial boards of the newspaper Pravda and of the magazines Rabotnitsa and Prosveshchenie. In 1915 she attended conferences of RSDLP sections abroad and the International Socialist Women’s Conference in Bern; thereafter, she worked in Russia. Arrested in 1916, she was exiled to Turukhan Krai.

A member of the Irkutsk party committee during the February Revolution of 1917, Rozmirovich came to Petrograd in March. She was a delegate to the Seventh (April) Conference of the RSDLP(B), a member of the Central Bureau of the military organization of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B), and a member of the editorial board of the newspaper Soldatskaia pravda. In October 1917 she carried out assignments of the Military Revolutionary Committee and later became a member of the Petrograd Revolutionary Tribunal. From 1918 to 1922 she was chairman of the investigation commission of the Supreme Tribunal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and concurrently chairman of the Chief Political Administration of the People’s Commissariat of Railroad Transportation. From 1922 to 1930, Rozmirovich served as a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of the USSR, and from 1931 to 1933, as a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Communications of the USSR. She engaged in scholarly work from 1935. During the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), Rozmirovich was curator of the estates of A. S. Pushkin, L. N. Tolstoy, and M. Gorky.

Rozmirovich was a delegate to the Fourteenth through Sixteenth Party Congresses and became a member of the Central Control Commission in 1924; from 1927 to 1930 she was a member of the presidium of the Central Control Commission. She was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committees at the third, fourth, and fifth convocations. Rozmirovich was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor.