Yakov Sverdlov


Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, known by the pseudonyms "Andrei", "Mikhalych", "Max", "Smirnov", "Permyakov", "Jacob", was a Bolshevik party administrator and chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from 1917 to 1919.
The post of chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was formally the highest state post in the RSFSR. Sverdlov took this position at the age of 32, which makes him the youngest non-monarchist head of the Russian state in history. He also lived the shortest life.

Early life

Sverdlov was born in Nizhny Novgorod as Solomon Mikhailovich Sverdlov to Jewish parents, Mikhail Izrailevich Sverdlov and Elizaveta Solomonova. His father was a politically active engraver who produced forged documents and stored arms for the revolutionary underground. The Sverdlov family had six children: two daughters and four sons. After his wife's death in 1900, Mikhail converted with his family to the Russian Orthodox Church, married Maria Aleksandrovna Kormiltseva, and had two more sons, Herman and Alexander. Yakov's eldest brother Zinovy was adopted by Maxim Gorky, who was a frequent guest at the house.
Yakov Sverdlov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902, and then the Bolshevik faction, supporting Vladimir Lenin.
He was involved in the 1905 revolution while living in the Ural Mountains.
After four years of high school, he became a major activist and speaker in Nizhny Novgorod. For most of the time from his arrest in June 1906 until 1917 he was either imprisoned or exiled. During the period 1914–1916 he was in internal exile in Turukhansk, Siberia, along with Joseph Stalin. Both had been betrayed by the Okhrana agent Roman Malinovsky. Like Stalin, he was co-opted in absentia to the 1912 Prague Conference.

Party leader

After the 1917 February Revolution Sverdlov returned to Petrograd from exile and was re-elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He played an important role in planning the October Revolution. He first met Lenin in April 1917 and was subsequently trusted as the chairman of the Central Committee Secretariat. Sverdlov was elected chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in November, becoming thereby de jure head of state of the Russian SFSR until his death. He played important roles in the decision in January 1918 to end the Russian Constituent Assembly and the subsequent signing on 3 March of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Sverdlov had a prodigious memory and was able to retain the names and details of fellow revolutionaries in exile. His organizational capability was well-regarded, and during his chairmanship, thousands of local party committees were initiated. Sverdlov is sometimes regarded as the first head of state of the Soviet Union although it was not established until 1922, three years after his death.

Romanov family

A number of sources claim that Sverdlov played a major role in the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family on 17 July 1918.
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A book written in 1990 by the Moscow playwright Edvard Radzinsky claims that Sverdlov ordered their execution on 16 July 1918. This book and other Radzinsky books were characterized as "folk history" by journalists and academic historians. However Yuri Slezkine in his book The Jewish Century expressed a slightly different opinion: "Early in the Civil War, in June 1918, Lenin ordered the killing of Nicholas II and his family. Among the men entrusted with carrying out the orders were Sverdlov, Filipp Goloshchyokin and Yakov Yurovsky".
The 1922 book by a White Army general, Mikhail Diterikhs, The Murder of the Tsar's Family and members of the House of Romanov in the Urals, sought to portray the murder of the royal family as a Jewish plot against Russia. It referred to Sverdlov by his Jewish nickname "Yankel" and to Goloshchekin as "Isaac". This book in turn was based on an account by one Nikolai Sokolov, special investigator for the Omsk regional court, whom Diterikhs assigned with the task of investigating the disappearance of the Romanovs while serving as regional governor under the White regime during the Russian Civil War.
According to Leon Trotsky's diaries, after returning from the front he had the following dialogue with Sverdlov:
The investigating magistrate in Ekaterinburg in 1918 saw the signed telegraphic instructions to execute the Imperial Family came from Sverdlov. These details were published in 1966.

Death

Sverdlov is commonly believed to have died of either typhus or most likely influenza, during the Spanish Flu, after a political visit to Oryol. He is buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, in Moscow. He was succeeded in an interim capacity by Mikhail Vladimirsky, and eventually by Mikhail Kalinin as Chairman of the Central Executive Committee, and by Elena Stasova as Chairwoman of the Secretariat. In 1924, Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlovsk in his honour.
His son Andrei had a long career as an officer for the Soviet security organs. His niece Ida married NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda.

Legacy