Breslav, Boris

Born Sept. 29 (Oct. 10), 1882; died Apr. 20, 1943. Soviet state and Party figure.

Breslav was born into a worker’s family in Mogilev Province. He was active in the revolutionary movement from 1899 and was a member of the Communist Party from 1903. In 1904 he was a member of the St. Petersburg committee of the RSDLP and executive secretary of the Vyborg and Moscow districts. In 1905, Breslav did Party work in Odessa, Nikolaev, and Ekaterinoslav. He was an active participant in the December 1905 armed revolt in Moscow, a member of the Moscow Party committee, and one of the organizers of fighting druzhinas. In 1911 he attended the Party school at Longjumeau (France), from which V. I. Lenin sent him and G. K. Ordzhonikidze and 1.1. Shvarts to Russia for the preparation of the Sixth (Prague) Convention of the RSDLP. Breslav was persecuted. After the February Revolution of 1917 he worked on Pravda in Petrograd and Kronstadt. From October 1917 he was a member of the Petrograd district Party committee and the executive committee of the Kronstadt soviet. Breslav was chairman of the Vitebsk Province Party committee, chairman of the Vitebsk city soviet, and chairman of the Moscow committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). Later he did political work in the Red Army. From 1924 he worked in Soviet state and economic activities. Breslav held an individual pension from 1935.