Shteinberg Yitzhak Nahman (1888, Dvinsk, now Daugavpils, Latvia – 1957, New York), figure in the Russian revolutionary movement, one of the leaders of the Jewish territorialist movement (see Territorialism), writer and publicist. Born into a merchant family in which devotion to tradition was combined with Enlightenment tendencies (Shteinberg's mother was a sister of the Jewish literary critic Ba'al-Makhashavot). Shteinberg received a Jewish education and throughout his life observed Jewish religious tradition (even while in the ranks of the SR Party and as a member of the first Soviet government).
He studied at Moscow University, from which he was expelled for revolutionary activity; he completed his education at the law faculty of Heidelberg University in Germany. His doctoral dissertation “The Concept of Crime in the Talmud” was published in German in 1910. In the same year he returned to Russia, became an assistant to a sworn attorney in Moscow, and then worked as a newspaper editor in Ufa.
From 1906 — a member of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs). After the February Revolution of 1917 he headed the party organization in Ufa and published articles in the party organ “Delo Naroda.” One of the leaders of the Left SR tendency which supported the Bolsheviks and participated in the October coup. At the First (founding) congress of the Party of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries-Internationalists (PLSRI) in November 1917 he was elected to the Central Committee. On 12 December 1917 Shteinberg became People's Commissar of Justice in the coalition Bolshevik-PLSRI government under V. Lenin. He was elected a deputy of the Constituent Assembly from Ufa. In his post Shteinberg attempted to halt the repressions being carried out by the punitive organs of Soviet power; on his orders certain political prisoners were released, though often over the objections of Cheka chairman Dzerzhinsky. On 15 March 1918 he resigned from the government in protest against the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty.
During the 2nd PLSRI congress Shteinberg launched sharp attacks on the Bolsheviks. He was arrested by the Cheka in February 1919, transferred to house arrest in May. In spring 1920 he headed the PLSRI majority that called for renouncing the struggle against Soviet power.
In 1922 Shteinberg left the country. He settled in Berlin, headed the party's foreign delegation and the SR group in the Vienna (socialist) International, and led the Left SR “Skify” publishing house. From 1926 to 1937 he was the author and editor of the Yiddish book series “Freye Shriftn far dem yidishn sotsialistishn gedank” (“Free Publications of Jewish Socialist Thought”), formulating the ideas of “ethical socialism.”
Shteinberg is the author of many works in Russian, Yiddish, German, and English. Best known are “Maria Spiridonova” (in English, 1935; in Yiddish and Hebrew, 1936), “The Moral Face of the Revolution” (in Yiddish and Russian, 1925), “Violence and Terror in Revolution” (in German, 1931), “In the Workshop of the Revolution” (in English, 1953, 1955), and the memoirs “Als ich Volkskommissar war” (in German, 1929).
After the Nazis came to power, Shteinberg became an adherent of territorialism. In 1935 he was elected chairman of the League of Territorialist Organizations (later the Freeland League), seeking a refuge for Jews unable to go to Palestine. He devoted enormous energy to the “Kimberley project” for Jewish settlement in Australia; after it proved illusory he went to New York in 1943. He described his work as Freeland League emissary in “Gelebt un gekholemt in Ostralye” (“Lived and Dreamed in Australia,” Yiddish, 1945) and “Australia — The Unpromised Land” (in English, 1948). A memorial volume, “Itskhok Nakhman Shtaynberg Gedenk-Bukh,” was published in New York in 1961.