Fricis Rozins

(also Frīdrihs Roziņŝ; pen name, Azis). Born Mar. 7 (19), 1870, in the volost (small rural district) of Purmsātu, in what is now the village soviet of Virga, Liepāja Raion, Latvian SSR; died May 7, 1919, in the village of Lūznava, in what is now the village soviet of Spēļi Rēzekne Raion, Latvian SSR; buried in Riga. One of the founders of the Communist Party of Latvia; a publicist.

Son of a peasant, Roziņŝ studied at the University of Tartu from 1891 to 1897 and took part in the revolutionary movement. In 1899 he emigrated to England, where he organized and edited Latvian Social Democratic journals. He participated in the establishment of the Latvian Social Democratic Labor journals. He participated in the establishment of the Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party (1904) and was a member of the party’s Central Committee. In November 1905 he began work in Latvia, where he directed the party press. Roziņŝ was a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP (1907). In 1908 he was arrested and sentenced to hard labor; in 1913 he was exiled to Eastern Siberia, whence he fled to the USA. He was the editor of the Latvian Social Democratic newspaper Rabochii, which maintained a Bolshevik point of view.

In October 1917, Roziņŝ returned to Latvia, and in December he became chairman of Iskolat (Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Landless Deputies of Latvia)—the first Soviet government of Latvia. In March 1918 he became deputy people’s commissar of nationalities of the RSFSR, and he served as a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In 1919 he became commissar of agriculture in the government of Soviet Latvia.

Roziņŝ was the author of works on Marxist philosophy, the international workers’ movement, and agrarian relations in Latvia. In 1900 he was the first to translate into Latvian and publish The Communist Manifesto by K. Marx and F. Engels.