Pece, Jan

(Ian Iakovlevich Peche). Born Dec. 17, 1881; died Nov. 24, 1942. Participant in the revolutionary movement in Russia. Member of the Communist Party from 1903.

The son of a farm laborer, Peče was born in Tadaiki Volost (small rural district), now Liepāja Raion, Latvian SSR. An industrial worker in Libava (now Liepāja), he was a member of the Libava Committee of the RSDLP and the Libava Soviet during the Revolution of 1905–07. In 1906 he became active in party work in Riga, Nikolaev, and Moscow. He was arrested and exiled to Narym in 1914, but in 1916 he escaped from exile and conducted party work in Samara (now Kuibyshev) and Rostov-on-Don.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Peče was a member of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP(B). He was one of the organizers of the Red Guard and a member of its Central Headquarters. He fought in the October battles in Moscow and then became a member of the staff of the Moscow Military Organization and the first military commissar of the city. In 1919 he was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the army of Soviet Latvia. Later he conducted party work in Tiumen’, Transcaucasia, Moscow, and the Crimea. In 1927 he became a special pensioner. He wrote a number of reminiscences of the October Revolution of 1917 in Moscow.