Semen Nakhimson

Born Nov. 13 (25), 1885, in Liepaja; died July 6, 1918, in Yaroslavl. Participant in the revolutionary movement in Russia.

Nakhimson graduated from the University of Bern in 1911 with the degree of doctor of philosophy and economics. He joined the Bund as a secondary school student in 1902 and then worked in the organization of the Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party. He was a leader of the Libau (Liepāja) revolutionary military organization of the Bund in 1905; he was sentenced to death in absentia but managed to escape abroad. Nakhimson became a member of the Kovno military organization of the RSDLP and the Bund in 1906. He was a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP in 1907. He emigrated in late 1907.

Upon returning to Russia in 1912, Nakhimson joined the Bolshevik Party; worked in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities; and wrote for Zvezda and Pravda. He entered the army in 1915. Nakhimson faced a military field tribunal in early 1917 for revolutionary agitation. Freed by the February Revolution of 1917, he became a member of the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) and of the military section of the Petro-grad Soviet. He was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B). Nakhimson served as commissar of the Latvian Riflemen in September 1917. He became chairman of the revolutionary military committee of the district of the Twelfth Army in October 1917. He was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. In November 1917 he served as chairman of the Executive Committee of Soldiers’ Deputies and as commissar of the Twelfth Army. He was a military commissar of the Yaroslavl Military District in 1918, and from July, chairman of the provincial executive committee.

Nakhimson was shot by the White Guards during the Yaroslavl mutiny of 1918. He is buried in Marsovo Pole in Leningrad.