Martins Lacis

Martin Ivanovich Latsis  born Jānis Sudrabs  was a Latvian-born Soviet politician, revolutionary and state security high officer. He was a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1905 (an "Old Bolshevik"), an active participant in the Russian Revolutions of 1905–1907 and 1917, a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee, a member of the Collegium of the All-Russia Cheka (1918–1921) and Chairman of the Cheka in Ukraine (1919), and a member of VTsIK.

Between 1932 and 1937, Latsis was a director at the Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics.

Latsis was the author of the book Dva goda borby na vnutrennom fronte ("Two Years of Struggle in the Internal Front", Moscow: Gos. izd-vo, 1920), in which he advocated unrestrained violence against class enemies. He boasted of the harsh repressive policies used by the Cheka.

 In 1918, while a deputy chief of the Cheka in Ukraine, he established the principle that sentences were not to be determined by guilt or innocence—but by social class. He is quoted as explaining the Red Terror as follows:

We are engaged in exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. You need not prove that this or that man acted against the interests of the Soviet power. The first thing you have to ask an arrested person is: To what class does he belong, where does he come from, what kind of education did he have, what is his occupation? These questions are to decide the fate of the accused. That is the quintessence of the Red Terror.

Latsis became a victim of the stalinist regime himself as latvian, during the 1930s communist "National Operations" of "Great Purge", when he was arrested, accused of belonging to a "counter-revolutionary, nationalist organization", and shot in 1938

In 1956, the post-Stalin government of Nikita Khrushchev politically rehabilitated him.

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Born 1878, усадьбе Паутины Розенбекской вол. Лифляндской губ. (Латвия); латыш; незаконченное высшее;

ректор института народного хозяйства им. Плеханова..

Lived: Москва, ул. Горького, д. 22, кв. 2..

Arrested: 29 November 1937.

Sentenced: Комиссией НКВД СССР и прокурора СССР 11 February 1938.

Charged: "принадлежности к фашистской националистической латышской организации при обществе ""Прометей""".

Shot: 20 Mart 1938.

Buried: место захоронения - Московская обл., Бутово.

Rehabilitated: 2 June 1956.

Source: Москва, расстрельные списки - Бутовский полигон

File number: том I, стр.255, место хранения дела - ГА РФ.

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