Aron Vainshtein

Aron Isaakovich Vainshtein (23 November 1877 – 12 March 1938), known by the nom de guerre Rakhmiel, was a Jewish socialist activist and politician in Soviet Belorussia.

In 1897, Vainshtein graduated from the Vilna Jewish Teaching Institute. He quickly emerged as the leading figure in the Warsaw Committee of the Bund. During the early period of the Bund movement, Vainshtein's Warsaw faction opposed the line of calling for Jewish national rights of John Mill's Geneva-based leadership.

Inside the Bund, Vainshtein came to vacillate between centrist, rightist, and leftist positions. Vainshtein served as the Kombund representative in the Military Revolutionary Committee of Belorussia from August to December 1920. At an Extraordinary All-Russian Bundist Conference, held in Minsk on March 5, 1921 the delegates representing some 3,000 party members debated disbanding the Communist Bund. At the conference Vainshtein spoke in favour of disbanding the Kombund and merging with the Communist Party.

In 1921 he was inducted into the Yevsektsia Central Bureau, where he remained until 1924. He served as Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Kirghiz Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic from 1921 to 1922. Between 1923 and 1930 he served on the board of the People's Commissariat of Finance of the USSR. He was a board member of KOMZET, becoming its deputy chairman in 1928. During the 1930s he headed the Moscow branch of OZET.

Vainshtein was arrested in February 1938. He reportedly committed suicide after ten days in detention.