Ginzburg (Ginsburg) (Naumov) Abram Moiseyevich (b. 1878, Vitebsk Governorate – ?) – revolutionary figure.
Abram Ginzburg studied at Kharkov University from 1897 to 1899. From 1899, member of the Dvinsk Committee of the Bund; from late 1899, member of the Yekaterinoslav Committee of the RSDLP. From 1900 to 1902, effectively led the newspaper Yuzhny Rabochy (“Southern Worker”). In January 1902, elected to the Central Committee of the Union of Southern Committees and Organisations of the RSDLP. In February 1902, was administratively exiled to Eastern Siberia. Escaped in early 1905.
In 1906, Abram Ginzburg became a member of the Moscow, and later the Riga, committees of the RSDLP, aligning with the Mensheviks. From 1906 to 1910, one of the leaders of the Metalworkers' Union and a member of the Central Bureau of Trade Unions. Co-founder and regular contributor to the Menshevik newspaper Nasha Zarya (“Our Dawn”). Arrested again in 1910 and exiled under police supervision to Vitebsk. In 1911, passed his law faculty examinations externally at St Petersburg University. From early 1912, lived in Kyiv, he contributed to the newspaper Kievskaya Mysl (“Kyiv Thought”), and conducted studies on the living conditions of workers, culminating in the publication of his book Workers’ Budgets in Kyiv (1913).
After the February Revolution of 1917, Abram Ginzburg was elected a member of the Kyiv Committee of the RSDLP (Mensheviks), the executive committee of the Kyiv Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, a city councillor, and deputy mayor. He viewed the October coup in Petrograd negatively, considering it a consequence of national anarchy. After Soviet power was established in Kyiv, he withdrew from political life and worked in the cooperative sector, the provincial economic council, the provincial planning department, and other institutions.
From 1922, Abram Ginzburg lived in Moscow and worked within the apparatus of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh). Simultaneously, from 1923 to 1930, he taught at the Plekhanov Moscow Institute of National Economy, serving as professor and head of the Department of Industrial Economics. From 1928, he served as deputy chair of the board of the Planning and Economic Administration and deputy chair of the Institute for Industrial and Economic Research under the VSNKh. Participated in the development of the first long-term industrial development plans for the USSR and was a member of the Russian Association of Institutes of Social Sciences.
Arrested in 1930, Abram Ginzburg was sentenced in March 1931 to 10 years in prison.
He was married to Anna, the sister of Marc Chagall.
Works:
История социализма и рабочее движение (The History of Socialism and the Labour Movement). Kyiv, 1920.
Экономика промышленности СССР. (The Economy of Soviet Industry, Parts 1–2). Moscow–Leningrad, 1925, 1927.
Literature:
Подлипский А. Евреи в Витебске. Ч. 1. Витебск, 2004. С. 55–56.