People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity(set)
Any Political and party leadership 26 Government and administration 5 Military command 8 Security, intelligence and policing 2 Diplomacy and international organization 3 Economy, finance and planning 3 Agriculture and land policy 1 Social movements and organizing 33 Scholarship and theory 4 Science and technology 2 Literature and arts 3 Law and justice 1
Affiliation

Most people

Any Soviet Unionstate 1

All 1 affiliations

Soviet Union

Soviet Unionstate 1
Position(set)
Any Imperial establishment and White movement 2 Left critics of Bolshevism 1 Socialist-bloc reform leader 2 Non-Bolshevik socialists 3 National liberation and anti-colonial movements 1 Marxism and communism 34 Liberalism and republicanism 4 Conservatism and Christian democracy 1 Nationalism 2
Citizenship
Any Soviet Union 1
Background
Any Latvia 1
Era
Any

People of the Soviet Union

The revolutionary generation1917–1940 1
Law and justice Left critics of Bolshevism Clear all

Isaac Zakharyevich Steinberg

Исаак Захарович Штейнберг
Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries Left critics of Bolshevism Soviet Union Latvia 1888–1957 ○ Natural causes

First People's Commissar of Justice under Lenin: the Left SR who defended revolutionary legality against the Cheka

"Then why bother with a Commissariat for Justice? Let's call it frankly the Commissariat for Social Extermination!" — to Lenin, protesting a Cheka summary-execution clause, February 1918

Left SR lawyer, first People's Commissar of Justice in Lenin's coalition government. He championed revolutionary legality against the Cheka and resigned over the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. In exile he was a Yiddish writer and territorialist activist.

Career timeline
  • 1906Joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party while at Moscow University
  • 1908Arrested, exiled to Tobolsk province for 2 years; later earned law master's at Heidelberg
  • 1915Arrested for anti-war work, exiled to Ufa; practiced law and led Ufa Left SRs
  • 1917Elected to Constituent Assembly (Ufa), Left SR Central Committee, executive of All-Russian Council of Peasant Deputies
  • 1917.12–1918.03People's Commissar of Justice: restricted Cheka powers, freed political prisoners, issued Revolutionary Tribunal rules; resigned over Brest-Litovsk
  • 1918Organized partisan detachments in Kursk and Taganrog; detained by Cheka for 4.5 months in 1919
  • 1923Emigrated to Berlin, stripped of Soviet citizenship; co-founded 'Skify' publishing, joined Vienna International
  • 1933–1957Co-founded Freeland League in London, pursued Kimberley Plan; edited Yiddish journal Afn Shvel; died in New York