Hayk Ovsepyan

Hayk (Haik) A. Hovsepyan (Hovsepian) (Հայկ Հովսեփյան, Jan 19 (according to other sources June 19) 1891 - 1937, Moscow) - was a Soviet military leader and Army Commissar rank 2 (1935). He was also a deputy Chief of the General Political Department of the Red Army. He was shot during the "purges" (1937).

Biography
Haik Hovsepyan was born in 1891 in the city of Bashkadyklar, (Kars Oblast, Russian Empire). Of Armenian ethnicity, he was active and enlisted in numerous parties, including the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He graduated from the Moscow Lazarev seminary in 1911, as well as the Medical Faculty of Moscow University. During the First World War (1914-1918), he served on the Caucasian front. In 1922, he became the head of the political commissar and the Armenian Infantry Division. In the years of 1925-1927, he was the deputy head of the political directorate of the Caucasian Army. In 1927, he was elected as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Armenia. In 1928, he was appointed in the Volga Military District deputy, being its first deputy head of the political directorate. In 1929-1937, he was Head of Department, Deputy, as well as being First Deputy Head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army. He became a CEC member of the Transcaucasian Federation as well. In 1937, he was arrested and sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union in the same year, as well as being shot on the same day as he received the sentence. He was later rehabilitated ("name cleansed").

Awards

 * Order of the Red Banner (20.02.1928)