Ran Khava (Chawa) Mordukhovna (1899, Dvinsk – unknown)

In 1915 Khava Ran graduated from a private gymnasium in Dvinsk. From 1915 to 1921 she gave private lessons in her native town, later moving to Riga where she enrolled in pedagogical courses. From 1922 to 1929 she worked as a teacher at the 4th Municipal Jewish School.

Between 1922 and 1929 she took an active part in the underground activities of the Riga organisation of the Communist Party of Latvia, carrying out propaganda work. For participation in revolutionary activities she was arrested in 1929 and remained under investigation in Riga prison until the end of 1930. In 1930 she was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment but was released on bail and in March 1931, with the permission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, emigrated to the Soviet Union.

In Moscow she enrolled at the Krupskaya Academy of Communist Education, but in 1934, following mobilisation by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), she was appointed as a women’s organiser in the political department of an MTS in Khabarovsk Krai, where she worked in party positions until 1938.

In 1938, while working for the editorial office of the regional newspaper Tikhookeanskaya Zvezda, she was arrested but was released in 1939 and reinstated in the Party and in her former position. She continued working for the newspaper until 1956 as head of the letters department and as a correspondent. In 1956, after a serious illness, she returned to Riga.