14 Facts About Rosalia Zemlyachka

Rosalia Zemlyachka Zalkind was born in Kyiv, Kiev Governorate, the daughter of a wealthy, First Guild merchant, Samuil Markovich Zalkind.

Rosalia Zemlyachka was educated in a girls' gymnasium in Kiev, and later at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lyon.

Rosalia Zemlyachka was a delegate to the Second Congress of the RSDLP, which convened in Brussels in July 1903, but she was arrested by the Belgian police and deported.

Rosalia Zemlyachka continued to support Lenin when he appeared to be losing control of the Bolsheviks, who wanted to bring about a reconciliation of the factions of the RSDLP.

Rosalia Zemlyachka was arrested in 1906, but escaped from a police station.

Rosalia Zemlyachka was arrested several times, and in October 1907 was imprisoned in the Lithuania Castle in St Petersburg.

Rosalia Zemlyachka returned to Russia illegally in 1914, and took charge of illegal transport across the Finnish border.

Rosalia Zemlyachka was appointed secretary of the Crimean party committee in November 1920, when the last White Army left in the war, commanded by Baron Wrangel, was evacuating the peninsula.

Rosalia Zemlyachka became so well known as "the scourge of bureaucrats and red-tape mongers" that a letter reached her from the provinces with the address 'Moscow, Comrade Zemlyachka'.

Rosalia Zemlyachka received a major promotion in May 1939, when she was appointed Chairman of the Soviet Control Commission and a Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union.

Rosalia Zemlyachka 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.

Rosalia Zemlyachka's ashes were buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Rosalia Zemlyachka was born into the family of a merchant of the first guild.

Rosalia Zemlyachka graduated from the Kiev Women's Gymnasium and the Faculty of Medicine of Lyon University.