Yakov Sverdlov

Yakov Sverdlov

Yakov Mikhaylovich Sverdlov (Russian: Я́ков Миха́йлович Свердло́в) (May 22 (June 3 New Style) 1885 - March 16 1919) was a Bolshevik party leader and an official of pre-Soviet Communist Russia.

He was born Yankel Solomon in Nizhny Novgorod, the son of a Jewish engraver. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902. He joined the Bolshevik faction and supported 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 reelected 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 (VTsIK) 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 1919 epidemic.

The city of Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlovsk in 1924 to honour Sverdlov. However, in 1991, the name was changed back to Yekaterinburg.

See also

*Zinovy Peshkov (Zinovy Sverdlov), Yakov's brother