Deich Max (Mendel) (Abelovich) (born 30 October 1885, Dvinsk [now Daugavpils, Latvia] – executed 30 October 1937) - revolutionary, Cheka and GPU official, later a Soviet administrator.
Born into the family of a cabman, Max Deich trained as a harness-maker in Dvinsk. He joined the Jewish Labour Bund between 1900 and 1908. On 13 June 1905 he was sentenced to death by a military-district court for an attempt on the life of a bailiff. The sentence was commuted to life in penal servitude. Between 1905 and 1907 he served sentences in prisons in Vilnius, Minsk, Smolensk and Moscow. In 1908 he was sent to carry out katorga labour constructing the Amur Wheel Road in Siberia. He escaped and emigrated to the United States, where he worked as a painter in Boston, New York and Detroit. Between 1909 and 1917, he was a member of the Socialist Party of America.
Max Deich returned to Russia in 1917 and joined the Communist Party in November 1917; he was expelled in 1922 but shortly reinstated. From October 1917 to January 1918, he served as expeditionary manager of the Saratovskie Izvestiya newspaper and led a unit of the Red Guard. Between February and June 1918, he was on the collegium of the Saratov provincial Soviet and simultaneously served as commissar of the city’s revolutionary militia. From July 1918, he led the Saratov provincial militia, and from January to May 1919, he chaired the Saratov provincial Cheka.
In May 1919, Deich was transferred to Moscow’s VChK, serving as a member of the troika under Feliks Dzerzhinsky and Peters. He was part of the collegium of the VChK’s secret division, headed the railway militia, and was on the collegium of the Main Militia Administration. In February 1920, he was seconded to Odessa and, on 6 March, appointed deputy chairman of the Odessa provincial Cheka and head of its secret‑operational department, becoming chairman on 10 August. In November 1921, he was placed on long‑term medical leave. From September 1922, he served as deputy head of the Economic Control Department in the central GPU.
From 1924, Deich held a series of administrative posts: he chaired a wool trust; was deputy chair of the Ovtsovod joint stock company; chaired the First City Wool Trust; led the Sheep Management Directorate; served on the presidium of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh); chaired Kharkov Coal; led Soyuzsherst (the wool union); and from 1933 to 1934, he was Deputy People’s Commissar for Light Industry. In 1934, he was appointed to the Bureau of the Soviet Control Commission under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, leading its Light Industry Group.
He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner (1921) and received the “Honoured Worker of VChK–GPU” badge in 1922 and again in 1932. On 27 June 1937, he was arrested and on 30 October executed by decree of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.