Rabchinskii, Ivan

Born Jan. 24, 1879, in the village of Kazatino, now the city of Kazatin, Vinnitsa Oblast; died Jan. 30, 1950, in Moscow. Soviet state and party official. Member of the Communist Party from 1905.

The son of a railroad worker, Rabchinskii graduated from the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute in 1915. He engaged in revolutionary work in the Ukraine and in St. Petersburg beginning in 1895. During the Revolution of 1905–07 he was a member of the St. Petersburg Soviet, later engaging in party work in Revel (Tallinn). During the February Revolution of 1917, Rabchinskii was one of the leaders of the uprising and a member of the Revel Committee of the RSDLP(B), the Northern Baltic Oblast Committee of the RSDLP(B), and the Northern Oblast Committee of the party. He was also a delegate to the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference and to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B).

Rabchinskii was the editor of many Estonian party newspapers. During the October days of 1917 he was chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Estonian Krai. In 1917 and 1918 he was a member of the collegium and deputy people’s commissar of post and telegraph of the RSFSR, as well a representative plenipotentiary of the government of the Estonian Labor Commune of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR. Rabchinskii was later commissar of Estonian affairs in the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities and a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. He was vice-chairman of the Mining Department of the Supreme Council on the National Economy in 1919. From 1920 to 1931, Rabchinskii was director and managing editor of the State Publishing House of Technical and Theoretical Literature, which was founded on his initiative; beginning in 1931 he engaged in administrative and scholarly work.