Fridman (Friedmann) Ilya (Ilja) Grigoryevich (15 July 1927, Riga) — lawyer.

Ilya Fridman was born into the family of an office employee and bookkeeper, G. L. Fridman (1902–1963). He completed six classes of incomplete secondary school and in 1941 was evacuated to the Dzerzhinsky district of the Kurgan region of the Kazakh SSR. In 1945 he returned to Riga, where he completed his secondary education.

In 1951 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Latvian State University. From 1950 to 1952 he worked as an investigator in the prosecutor’s office of the Aknīste district of the Latvian SSR. From 1952 to 1956 he served as assistant prosecutor in the Valka district, where he was elected deputy and later secretary of the local party organization of the prosecutor’s office and court. He was also a deputy of the Valka City Council and worked for two years as a lecturer on historical and dialectical materialism at the House of Party Education of the Valka district.

From 1956 to 1962 he served as assistant prosecutor of the Stalin (later Proletarian) district of Riga, and from 1962 to 1964 as assistant prosecutor of the October district. From 1964 to 1972 he was assistant prosecutor of the city of Riga, working throughout in the field of judicial supervision.

From 1956 Ilya Fridman was also engaged in journalism and literary activity, mainly in the field of promoting Soviet law. He became a member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR in 1967. His works (essays, short stories, feuilletons, and humorous pieces) were published in various journals and newspapers of the republic, as well as in other Soviet republics and central press outlets. He was the author of three books of fiction and co-author of a screenplay посвящённого работе юристов.

In the 1990s he worked as a sworn advocate at Riga Bar Office No. 7. In 1997 the Bar Association of the Latvian SSR granted his request for a two-year creative leave.

He was a member of the Komsomol (1943–1951) and of the Communist Party (from 1952). For his long service in the prosecutor’s office he received several commendations and was awarded an honorary certificate from the Riga City Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia and the city executive committee, as well as the medal “For Valiant Labour.”

He was married to Anna Fridman (born 1929); their son is Nikolai Fridman.

Family:

G. L. Fridman (1902–1963, Riga) — father
Levitan (1900) — mother
Anna Fridman (1929) — wife
Nikolai Fridman — son
M. T. Fridman — brother
E. G. Maron (née Fridman) — sister