Shtraukh, Engelbert

(also Engelbert Strauch). Born Jan. 10 (22), 1896, in Helsingfors (Helsinki); died Apr. 21,1938. Participant in the struggle for Soviet power in Estonia; party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1912.

The son of a worker, Shtraulch became a metalworker in 1911 in the naval port of the city of Revel (now Tallinn). After the February Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the Revel soviet and chairman of the naval port and Revel committees of the RSDLP(B). During the October Days of 1917, he served as a member of the presidium of the city’s revolutionary committee, chairman of its revolutionary tribunal, and commissar for foodstuffs.

In 1918, during the Ice Campaign of the Baltic Fleet, Shtraukh helped organize the transfer of ships from Revel to Helsingfors. Between 1918 and 1921 he served as chairman of the collegium for foodstuffs of Omsk Province, and he took part in the struggle against the forces of A. V. Kolchak and the White Czechs; during the same period he also served as commissar for foodstuffs of Omsk and deputy commissar for foodstuffs of Tomsk Province. In 1921 and 1922, Shtraukh was secretary of the Russian Bureau of the Communist Party of Estonia (in Petrograd) and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia. From 1922 he served in the People’s Commissariat for Foodstuffs of the RSFSR, the Central Control Commission and Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate of the RSFSR, and the apparatus of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR.

Shtraukh was a delegate to the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Congresses of the ACP(B), and from 1927 to 1934 he served as a member of the Central Control Commission of the ACP(B). In 1921, Shtraukh was a delegate to the Third Congress of the Comintern.