Ozolin, Karlis

(Kārlis Ozoliņŝ). Born Aug. 18 (31), 1905, in Madliena Volost (small rural district), now Ogre Raion, Latvian SSR. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the CPSU since 1926. Son of a peasant. Graduate (1948) of the Higher Party School Under the Central Committee of the ACP (Bolshevik).

Ozolin’ began working as a farmhand in 1915 and then became a worker in Riga. He was imprisoned in bourgeois Latvia from 1927 to 1930 and from 1931 to 1937. After the restoration of Soviet power in Latvia in July 1940, he worked for the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Latvia [CP(B)L]. In October of that year he became managing editor of the newspaper Cīņa (The Struggle), the central organ of the Central Committee of the CP(B)L. In December 1942, as head of an operational group of the Central Committee of the CP(B)L, he was sent behind enemy lines in order to direct underground party organizations and the partisan movement in Latvia. He served as secretary for cadres of the Central Committee of the CP(B)L in 1944 and as editor of Cīņa from 1944 to 1951.

Ozolin’ was deputy chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR in 1951 and 1952 and again in 1960 and 1961. Between 1952 and 1959 he served concurrently as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR and deputy chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Ozolin’ was a delegate to the Twentieth (1956) and Twenty-first (1959) Congresses of the CPSU and was elected a member of the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU at the Twentieth Congress. He was a member of the Central Committee of the CPL from 1940 to 1959 and again in 1960 and 1961. He served as a deputy to the third through fifth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Ozolin’ received a merit pension in 1962. He has been awarded three Orders of Lenin, five other orders, and various medals.