Yakov Sverdlov
Yakov Mikhaylovich Sverdlov , born Yankel Movshevich Sverdlov ; known under pseudonyms "Andrey", "Mikhalych", "Max", "Smirnov", "Permyakov" was a
Bolshevik party leader and an official of pre-
Soviet Communist Russia.
He was born in
Nizhny Novgorod as the son of a Jewish engraver. He joined the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902, and then its the Bolshevik faction, supporting
Vladimir Lenin. He was involved in the
1905 revolution.
After his arrest in June 1906, for most of the time until 1917 he was either imprisoned or exiled.
Encyclopedia
Yakov Mikhaylovich Sverdlov , born Yankel Movshevich Sverdlov ; known under pseudonyms "Andrey", "Mikhalych", "Max", "Smirnov", "Permyakov" was a
Bolshevik party leader and an official of pre-
Soviet Communist Russia.
He was born in
Nizhny Novgorod as the son of a Jewish engraver. He joined the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902, and then its the Bolshevik faction, supporting
Vladimir Lenin. He was involved in the
1905 revolution.
After his arrest in June 1906, for most of the time until 1917 he was either imprisoned or exiled.
After the 1917 February Revolution he returned to
Petrograd from exile and was re-elected to the Central Committee. He played an important role in planning the October Revolution. Research in 1990 by the Moscow playwright and historian Edvard Radzinsky uncovered Sverdlov's role in the execution of
Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
A close ally of
Vladimir Lenin, Sverdlov played an important role in persuading leading Bolsheviks to accept the controversial decisions to close down the
Constituent Assembly and the signing of the
Brest-Litovsk Treaty. It was claimed that Lenin provided the theories and Sverdlov made sure they worked.
He is sometimes referred to as the first head of state of the Soviet Union but this is not correct since the
Soviet Union only came into existence in 1922. As chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee he was the de facto head of state of the Russian SFSR from shortly after the October Revolution until the time of his death.
He died of
influenza in
Oryol during the 1918
Spanish influenza epidemic.
The city of
Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlovsk in 1924 to honour Sverdlov. However, in 1991, the name was changed back to Yekaterinburg. The
Imperial Russian Navy cruiser
Novik was renamed
Sverdlov, and was the first ship of her class.
See also
- Zinovy Peshkov , thought to be Yakov's brother
