Augusts Voss was a Soviet politician and party functionary of Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

n origin. Before World War II he worked as a school teacher. In 1940 he was mobilized into the Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 and served as a politruk. From 1945 he served as a party apparatchik

Apparatchik

Apparatchik is a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government; i.e., an agent of the governmental or party "apparat" that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management...

 in Latvia. From 1966 till 1984 he was First Secretary (later: General Secretary) of the Communist Party of Latvia

Communist Party of Latvia

Communist Party of Latvia was a political party in Latvia.- Latvian Social-Democracy prior to 1919 :The party was founded at a congress in June 1904. Initially the party was known as the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party . During its second party congress in 1905 it adopted the programme of...

 and member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...

 from 1971 till 1990. From 1984 till 1989 he was Chairman of the Soviet of Nationalities

Soviet of Nationalities

The Soviet of Nationalities , was one of the two chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, elected on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot in accordance with the principles of Soviet democracy...

 (of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR). Voss understood Latvian, but did not use it publicly. He did not return to Latvia and died in Moscow in 1994, where he is also buried.