Jan Antonovich Berzin

In 1904, he was arrested and exiled to Olonets Governorate, but he escaped in 1905, and worked as a political agitator in the Baltic region during the 1905 Russian Revolution.

In 1916–17, he edited the Latvian social-democratic journal Strādnieks in Boston, and contributed to the left 'Zimmerwaldist' newspaper Novy Mir in New York.

At the 6th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), in August 1917, he was elected a full member of the Central Committee.

From May to November 1918, he led the political delegation of the Bolsheviks in Switzerland, which was, alongside Sweden, one of the first countries that recognized the Soviet Republic.

However, on 12 November 1918, the Soviet mission was expelled from the area by the Swiss Federal Council on charges of espionage and revolutionary actions.

During the Great Purge, as a part of the so-called "Latvian Operation", Berzin was arrested in December 1937, and shot at the Kommunarka shooting ground on 29 August 1938 on charges of conspiring with "imperial forces".