Isaac Steinberg Исаак Штейнберг |
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People's Commissar for Justice of the RSFSR | |
In office 22 December 1917 – 18 March 1918 |
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Premier | Vladimir Lenin |
Preceded by | Pēteris Stučka |
Succeeded by | Pēteris Stučka |
Personal details | |
Born |
Isaac Nachman Steinberg 13 July 1888 Daugavpils, Russian Empire |
Died | 2 January 1957 New York City, United States |
(aged 68)
Political party | Left Social Revolutionary |
Occupation | Lawyer |
Isaac Nachman Steinberg (Russian: Исаак Нахман Штейнберг; 13 July 1888 – 2 January 1957) was a lawyer, revolutionary, politician, a leader of the Jewish Territorialist movement and writer in Soviet Russia and in exile.
Steinberg was born in Dvinsk, Russian Empire (today Daugavpils, Latvia), into a family of Jewish merchants. He was raised in a traditional religious home. In 1906, Steinberg entered Moscow University, where he studied law. He joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party (also known as SR or Eser) and was exiled for his activism. He then moved to Germany and completed his education at the University of Heidelberg.
In 1910, Steinberg returned to Russia and worked as a lawyer. From December 1917 to March 1918, he was People's Commissar (Narkom) of Justice in Vladimir Lenin's government during the Bolsheviks' short-lived coalition with the left wing of the SR. Steinberg resigned his post in protest against the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and campaigned against the Bolsheviks. In 1923, having been warned that he was in danger of assassination, he again moved to Germany and took his young family with him.
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Steinberg, his wife and three children settled in London. There, he was one of the co-founders of the Freeland League, which attempted to find a safe haven for European Jews fleeing the Holocaust.