Brandenburgsky (pseud. Goldzinsky) Yakov Nathanovich (1881, Balta, Podolsk province - 1951, Moscow) - statesman, party leader, lawyer.

In 1900 Yakov Brandenburgsky entered the Novorossiysk University (Odessa), for participation in the student movement in 1902 he was expelled, arrested and exiled from Odessa under police supervision. In 1903 he joined the RSDLP. In 1904-05 he was a member of the Ekaterinoslav, Riga, Tver committees of the party. Delegate to the 4th (Unification) Congress of the RSDLP (1906), then a member of the St. Petersburg Committee of the party. In the ‘Case of the Nineteen’ he was sentenced to imprisonment in a fortress. After his release in 1908 he went to France, where he co-operated with the Russian Social-Democrats.

In 1911 Yakov Brandenburgsky graduated from the Sorbonne Faculty of Law. In 1917 he returned to Russia. During the revolution he worked in the Petrograd Prodkommittee, from June 1918 - in the People's Commissariat of Labour. In 1920-1921 he was a member of the board of the Centrosoyuz. During the Civil War Yakov Brandenburgsky was appointed emergency commissioner of the All-Union Central Executive Committee to carry out prodrazverstka in a number of provinces. In 1922-1929 he was a member of the Collegium of the NKJ of the USSR and the Codification Commission of the SNK-STO of the USSR. In 1925-1929 he was appointed professor and dean of the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University, participated in the development of a number of draft laws. In 1929-1931 he was a member of the Nizhnevolzhsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b) and Deputy Chairman of the Regional Executive Committee. From 1931 he was a member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Labour of the USSR, headed the department of labour legislation of the People's Commissariat of Labour, edited the journal “Izvestiya Narcomtrud USSR”. In 1934-1938 Yakov Brandenburgsky was Member of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Chairman of the Collegium for Criminal Cases, then of the Collegium for Civil Cases of the Supreme Court of the USSR. In 1941- 1945 he participated in the work of the Sovinformburo. Author of books and articles on law.