Martin Ivanovich Latsis (Russian: Мартын Иванович Лацис; Latvian: Mārtiņš Lācis; born Jānis Sudrabs; Russian: Ян Фридрихович Судрабс, romanized: Yan Fridrikhovich Sudrabs; December 14, 1888 – February 11, 1938) was a Latvian Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, and senior state security officer of the Cheka from Courland (now Latvia).

[2] In 1918, while a deputy chief of the Cheka in Ukraine, he called for sentences to be determined not by guilt or innocence but by social class.

(Though, incidentally, one need not go to the same absurd lengths as Comrade Latsis, one of our finest, tried and tested Communists, did in his Kazan magazine, Krasny Terror.

He wanted to say that Red terror meant the forcible suppression of exploiters who attempted to restore their rule, but instead, he put it this way [on page 2 of the first issue of his magazine]: “Don't search [!!?]

[4]On November 29, 1937, during the so-called "Latvian Operation", Latsis was arrested, accused by a commission of NKVD and Prosecutor of the USSR of belonging to a "counter-revolutionary, nationalist organization" and executed in 1938 by shooting in the Butovo firing range.