Lawyer-revolutionary who headed the Central Committee agitprop department and later supervised the OGPU as a prosecutor
Born in 1880 into the family of an Armenian schoolteacher in Tbilisi, he studied law at Moscow University and in 1903 joined the Moscow student group of the RSDLP. Repeatedly punished for student activism, he practised as a lawyer in Moscow until 1917. After the revolution he edited the 11th Army newspaper Krasny Voin, headed the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the RCP(b) Central Committee from June 1920 to October 1921, and led the Foreign Department of the Cheka from January to April 1921. After serving as consul general in Berlin from 1922 he moved to the procuracy, supervising the OGPU, and in 1933–1938 was senior assistant prosecutor of the USSR Supreme Court for special cases and a state prosecutor at political trials. Arrested in 1938, he spent the years until 1955 in prison and exile and was then rehabilitated.
Activities and affiliations
- 1920–1921 Ideology and propaganda · Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks · Ideology and propaganda
- 1921 Security, intelligence and policing · Soviet Union state institutions
- 1922–1923 Diplomacy and international organization · Soviet Union state institutions
- 1923–1938 Law and justice · Soviet Union state institutions
Career Timeline
- 1910–1917Assistant attorney and attorney in Moscow
- 1918Editor of the 11th Army newspaper Krasny Voin
- 1920.06–1921.10Head of the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the RCP(b) Central Committee
- 1921.01.20–1921.04.10Head of the Foreign Department of the Cheka
- 1922Soviet consul general in Berlin
- 1924.07.25–1933Senior assistant prosecutor of the RSFSR Supreme Court supervising OGPU investigations
- 1933–1938Senior assistant prosecutor of the USSR Supreme Court for special cases