Martin Ivanovich Latsis ( , born Jānis Sudrabs) (December 14, 1888 – February 11, 1938) was a Latvian-born Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 politician, revolutionary and state security high officer. He was a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1905 (an "Old Bolshevik

Old Bolshevik

Old Bolshevik , also Old Bolshevik Guard or Old Party Guard, was an unofficial designation for those who were members of the Bolshevik party before the Russian Revolution of 1917, many of whom were either tried and executed by the NKVD during Stalin era purges or died under suspicious...

"), an active participant in the Russian Revolutions of 1905–1907 and 1917, a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee

Military Revolutionary Committee

The Military Revolutionary Committee also known as the Milrevcom was the name for military organs under the soviets during the period of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War. The most notable ones were those of the Petrograd Soviet, the Moscow Soviet, and at Stavka.These committees were...

, a member of the Collegium of the All-Russia Cheka (1918–1921) and Chairman of the Cheka

Cheka

Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...

 in Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 (1919), and a member of VTsIK. Between 1932 and 1937, Latsis was a director at the Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics

Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics

Plekhanov Russian Economic University is a public university located in Moscow, Russia. The university is one of the largest Russian economic institutes of higher education and a member of several international university bodies, such as the European University Association and the European...

.

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

Cheka

Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...

. 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

Red Terror

The Red Terror in Soviet Russia was the campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government. In Soviet historiography, the Red Terror is described as having been officially announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov and ended about October 1918...

 as follows:
Latsis became a victim of the stalinist regime himself during the 1930s Great Purge

Great Purge

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...

, 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

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...

 politically rehabilitated

Rehabilitation (Soviet)

Rehabilitation in the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal...

him.

Literature

• Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr; The Gulag Archipelago, Harper & Row, 660 pp., ISBN 0-06-080332-0.
• Gordievsky, Oleg; Andrew, Christopher, KGB: The Inside Story (1990), Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-48561-2.