Efraim Markovich Sklianskii

Born July 31 (Aug. 12), 1892, in Fastov; died Aug. 27, 1925. Soviet state, party, and military figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1913.

Sklianskii was descended from the meshchanstvo (urban middle class). From 1911 to 1916 he studied in the department of medicine at the University of Kiev, where he joined a Bolshevik organization. He was a propagandist of the Kiev committee of the RSDLP. He served in the army from 1916, first as a soldier and then as a doctor. After the February Revolution of 1917, he joined the RSDLP(B) corps committee (representing the XIX Corps) and army committee (representing the Fifth Army). He was also a member of the Dvinsk Committee. He was a delegate to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets and a member of its Presidium. Sklianskii was a member of the Petrograd military revolutionary committee. He served as commissar of the General Staff and of the General Headquarters of the Supreme Command in Mogilev. In 1917 and 1918 he was an administrative board member and deputy of the People’s Commissariat for Naval Affairs. In March 1918 he became a member of the Supreme Military Council of the RSFSR. From October 1918 to March 1924 he was deputy chairman of the revolutionary military council of the republic and a member of the Council of Defense. In 1920 and 1921 he was a member of the Council of Labor and Defense and of the administrative board of the People’s Commissariat for Public Health of the USSR. In April 1924 he directed the work of the Supreme Council on the National Economy of the USSR as chairman of the administrative board of the Mossukno Trust. He drowned while on official business in the USA. Sklianskii was a delegate to the Eigth, Tenth, and Twelfth Congresses of the RCP(B).