Rukhimovich, Moisei Lvovich
Rukhimovich, Moisei L’vovich
Born October 1889, in the village of Kagal’nik, in what is now Rostov Oblast; died July 20, 1938. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1913. Son of a metalworker.
Rukhimovich joined the Social Democratic movement in 1904 in Rostov. He lived in emigration from 1906 to 1909. In 1911 he took up party work in the Ukraine. In 1914 he was called up into the army. After the February Revolution of 1917, Rukhimovich became a member of the Kharkov committee of the RSDLP(B) and chairman of the military section of the Kharkov soviet. During the October Days of 1917 he was chairman of the Kharkov Military Revolutionary Committee and of the headquarters of the Red Guard. He fought in the Civil War of 1918–20. In 1918 he served as military commissar of the Donets-Krivoi Rog Soviet Republic. In 1919 and 1920 he was a member of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukraine and the revolutionary military council of the Fourteenth Army.
In 1921 and 1922, Rukhimovich was chairman of the Donets provincial executive committee, a member of the bureau of the provincial committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine, and chairman of the Bakhmut executive committee. From 1923 to 1925 he was director of the coal trust Donugol’. In 1925 and 1926 he became chairman of the Supreme Council on the National Economy of the Ukraine, and in 1926 he became deputy chairman of the Supreme Council on the National Economy of the USSR. From 1930 to 1934 he was people’s commissar of railroad transportation of the USSR and director of Kuzbassugol’ (a coal trust). Between 1934 and 1936 he was deputy people’s commissar of heavy industry of the USSR and then people’s commissar for the defense industry of the USSR.
Rukhimovich was a delegate to the Eighth Party Congress and the Tenth through the Seventeenth Congresses. At the Thirteenth through the Seventeenth Party Congresses he was elected to the Central Committee of the ACP(B). He was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine and a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Rukhimovich was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner.