Nisselovich (Nisselowitsch) Lazar/Lasar (Eliezer) Nissenovich (Leopold Nikolaevich; 1856, Bausk, Courland Governorate, now Bauska, Latvia – 1914, Geneva) — jurist and public figure.

In 1880, Lazar Nisselovich graduated from the Faculty of Law of St Petersburg University. He served in the Ministry of Finance and, at the request of the minister N. Bunge, wrote The History of Factory and Industrial Legislation of the Russian Empire (vols. 1–2, 1882?). He also authored works on Russia’s commercial and financial institutions. In 1882, he left the civil service and became a sworn attorney of the St Petersburg Judicial Chamber, as well as an assistant legal adviser to the State Bank.

In 1907, Nisselovich was elected a deputy to the State Duma from the Courland Governorate (where the Jewish population constituted less than 5 per cent). In the Duma, he joined the Constitutional Democratic Party (People’s Freedom Party, Kadets), while expressly reserving the right to an independent position on Jewish issues. In the extremely antisemitic and reactionary Third State Duma (1 November 1907 – 9 June 1912), the entire burden of responsibility for the fate of Russian Jewry fell upon the two Jewish deputies, L. Nisselovich and N. Fridman.

Nisselovich initiated a bill to abolish the Pale of Settlement, which he submitted to the Duma on 31 May 1910 with the signatures of 166 deputies, having persuaded part of the Octobrist faction to support it. However, owing to opposition from the right-wing majority, the bill was transferred in February 1911, without plenary debate, to the Commission on Personal Inviolability, where it remained without consideration. In 1911, the Duma adopted Nisselovich’s proposal to introduce instruction in the Jewish language in primary schools in areas with a substantial Jewish population.

Nisselovich opposed the antisemitic campaign connected with the assassination of Prime Minister P. Stolypin by D. Bogrov (September 1911) and rebutted pogromist attacks not only from the far right but also from the Chairman of the Duma, the Octobrist A. Guchkov. His parliamentary activity undermined his health, and he did not stand for election to the Fourth State Duma.

Among Nisselovich’s writings are the pamphlet on Jewish civil inequality A Tearful Prayer to the Eternal God, the Creator of the Universe! (Moscow, 1906) and the polemical report The Jewish Question in the Third State Duma (St Petersburg, 1908).