Rosalia Zemlyachka

Born into a wealthy Jewish family, she was educated in Kiev and later at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lyon. From age of 17, she was involved in revolutionary activities. A member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party since 1898, Zemlyachka worked as an agent for the Iskra newspaper.

She is best known for her involvement in the organization of the First Russian revolution, and along with Béla Kun, as one of the organizers of the Red Terror in the Crimea in 1920–1921, against former soldiers of the White Army. It was in Crimea that the White Russians led by General Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel fell to the Red Army in 1920. About 50,000 prisoners of war and anti-Bolshevik civilians who had surrendered after they had been promised amnesty, were subsequently executed, on orders from Kun and Zemlyachka, with Vladimir Lenin's approval.[2][3][4]

She then continued her career in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, surviving the purges and became vice-president of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. She is the only woman to have served at this level in the Stalinist period, and the first woman to be decorated with the Order of the Red Banner.

• Barbara Evans Clements, Bolshevik Women. Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 9780521599207

• http://www.knowbysight.info/ZZZ/02728.asp (Russian)