Melamed Ilya (1895-1938)

Melamed Ilya (27 July 1895, Dvinsk – 26 April 1938, Moscow) - Soviet military and economic figure, one of the organisers of industry in the USSR.

Ilya Melamed was born into a rabbi's family. In 1916, he was drafted into the army and served in the 177th Reserve Regiment (Novgorod). In 1917, he became a cadet at the Pavlovsk Infantry Military School (Petrograd). In 1918–21, he served in the Red Army and was commissar of the 51st Rifle, 10th Cavalry and other divisions on the Petrograd, Southern and Western fronts. In 1927, he graduated from the Leningrad Technological Institute with a degree in mechanical engineering. From 1928 to 1930, he interned at the Ford Motor Company in the United States. From 1930, he worked as chief engineer, and from 1933, as director of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant. In 1935, on the recommendation of the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry of the USSR, S. Ordzhonikidze, he was appointed director of the 1st State Bearing Plant (GPP) named after L. Kaganovich. On 20 November 1937, he was arrested by the NKVD and on 26 April 1938, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death on charges of organising sabotage activities. On the same day, he was shot at the Kommunarka firing range near Moscow. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 13 October 1956. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of the RSFSR (1921) and the Order of Lenin (1933). His son Vladimir died at the front in 1944 at the age of 22. His wife Valentina Mikhailovna died in 1988. He was the prototype for one of the main characters in Yakov Ilyin's book The Great Conveyor (1932), dedicated to the construction of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant.