Yemelyan Yaroslavsky

Yemelyan Yaroslavsky Емельян Ярославский
Yaroslavsky in 1917
Member of the 10th Secretariat
In office 16 March – 8 August 1921
Full member of the 10th, 18th Central Committee
In office 22 April 1939 – 4 December 1943
In office 16 March – 8 August 1921
Personal details
Born	Yemelyan Mikhailovich Yaroslavsky March 3 [O.S. February 19] 1878 Chita, Russian Empire
Died	4 December 1943 (65 years) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union

Yemelyan Mikhailovich Yaroslavsky (Russian: Емельян Михайлович Ярославский, born Minei Izrailevich Gubelman, Мине́й Изра́илевич Губельма́н; 3 March [O.S. 19 February] 1878 – 4 December 1943) was an ethnic Jewish Russian revolutionary, Communist Party functionary, journalist, and historian.

An atheist and anti-religious polemicist, Yaroslavsky served as editor of the atheist satirical journal Bezbozhnik (The Godless) and led the League of the Militant Godless organization. Yaroslavsky also headed the Anti-Religious Committee of the Central Committee.

Yemelyan Yaroslavsky was born into a Jewish family as Minei Israilevich Gubelman in Chita, then the capital of Russia's Transbaikal Oblast, on March 3, 1878.

Yaroslavsky entered the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party in 1898 and organized party cells on the Trans-Baikal (Zabaikalsky) Railroad). In 1901, he was a correspondent for the revolutionary newspaper "Iskra," and the following year became a member of the Party's Chita Committee. In 1903 he became a member of the St. Petersburg Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and became one of the leaders of the Military Wing of the party, siding with the Social Democrats' Bolshevik faction during the intraparty split.

Yaroslavsky took part in the 1905 Revolution and his wife, the revolutionary Olga Mikhailovna Genkina (1882–1905) was killed by a member of the Black Hundreds during the conflict. Yaroslavsky led communist activity in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinoslav, and Tampere (now in Finland) during the revolution and edited the paper "Kazarma." He was arrested in 1907 and sentenced to hard labor in the Gorny Zerentu Prison in the Nerchinsk region and later exiled to Eastern Siberia.