Aaron Soltz

Aaron Aleksandrovich Soltz (Russian: Аарон Александрович Сольц; 10 March 1872 – 30 April 1945) was an Old Bolshevik and a Soviet politician and lawyer.

[1] While partially responsible for the Soviet repressions he was one of very few high-ranking Joseph Stalin loyalists who openly objected to the Great Purge;[1] he died in a psychiatric clinic after years of involuntary commitment.

As a Jew living in Russia during a time of widespread anti-semitism, Soltz believed that his Jewishness, his outsider status drew him towards revolutionary thought.

[2] He was a member of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from 1898, and was involved in the organization of underground printing and publishing of illegal literature.

[1] In 1917 Soltz was a member of Moscow Committee of the Bolshevik Party, an editor of Social Democrat and Pravda newspapers.

[4] From 1935 Aaron Soltz served as a Deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR, and was later the Chairman of the Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.

He wrote that: Correct, ethical and good is whatever helps us reach our goal, smash our class enemies, and learn to organise our economic life according to socialist principles.

In 1929, he was speaking at a party meeting when someone in the audience demanded to know why Lenin's Testament, which had called for Stalin to be removed from the post of General Secretary, had not carried out.

Addressing a conference of party activists in Sverdlovsk, he called for a special commission to be set up to investigate Vyshinsky.