Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov ( – 16 March 1919) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A key Bolshevik organizer of the October Revolution of 1917, Sverdlov served as chairman of the Secretariat of the Russian Communist Party from 1918 until his death in 1919, and as chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (head of state) from 1917 until his death in 1919.

Born in Nizhny Novgorod to a Jewish family active in revolutionary politics, Sverdlov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902 and supported Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction from 1903. He was active in the Urals during the failed Revolution of 1905, and over the next decade was subjected to constant imprisonment and exile.

After the 1917 February Revolution overthrew the monarchy, Sverdlov returned to Petrograd and was appointed a secretary of the party's central committee. In this capacity, he played a key role in planning the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks came to power. Sverdlov became one of the most powerful figures in the Soviet regime, with Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin.

In November 1917, Sverdlov was elected chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the de facto head of state. He worked to consolidate Bolshevik control of the new regime and supported the Red Terror campaign and decossackization policies. He played major roles in the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, in persuading party members to support the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed with the Central Powers that March, and in authorising the execution of the Romanov family that July. He also served briefly as acting head of government after Lenin was injured in an assassination attempt in August.

In March 1919, Sverdlov died at age 33 of the Spanish flu, and was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. The city of Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) and Theatre Square in Moscow were renamed in his honour. Some historians regard his untimely death as a key factor which enabled the rise of Stalin after Lenin's death in 1924, as Sverdlov was a natural candidate for the post of General Secretary held by Stalin from 1922.

Early life

left|thumb|Sverdlov in 1904

Sverdlov was born in Nizhny Novgorod as Yakov-Aaron 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 (Sophia and Sara) and four sons (Zinovy, Yakov, Veniamin, and Lev). 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. Sverdlov's father was sympathetic to his children's socialist tendencies and 5 out of his 6 children would become involved in revolutionary politics at some point. Mikhail watched as his household slowly became a revolutionary hotspot, where the Novgorod Social Democrats would meet, write pamphlets, and even forge stamps for false passports. Yakov's eldest brother Zinovy was adopted by Maxim Gorky, who was a frequent guest at the house. Zinovy was the only Sverdlov to reject revolutionary politics and had little to no contact with Yakov after the revolution.

Yakov excelled at school, and after 4 years in gymnasium left to become a pharmacist's apprentice and a "professional revolutionary," Sverdlov joined while a teenager the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902, and then later the Bolshevik faction, supporting Vladimir Lenin.

In his youth, Sverdlov became friends with a fellow revolutionary Vladimir Lubotsky (later known as Zagorsky). He was involved in the 1905 revolution while living in the Ural Mountains. Though never actually attended college, Sverdlov adopted the garb of the radical students at the time – "With his medium height, unruly brown hair, glasses continually perched on his nose, and Tolstoy shirt worn under his jacket, Sverdlov looked like a student, and for us...a student meant a revolutionary." 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, 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. 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.

According to Leon Trotsky's diaries, after returning from the front (of the Russian Civil War) he had the following dialogue with Sverdlov:

Red Terror and decossackization

thumb|right|upright=1.2|Sverdlov and [[Grigory Zinoviev on The Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets]]

Following the assassination of Moisei Uritsky and the assassination attempt on Lenin in August 1918, Sverdlov drafted a document that called for "merciless mass terror against all the enemies of the revolution." He oversaw the interrogation of Lenin's would-be assassin, Fanny Kaplan, and even moved Kaplan from the Cheka headquarters to be held in a basement room underneath Sverdlov's apartment. Sverdlov's deputy Avanesov gave the order for Kaplan's execution and Sverdlov himself personally ordered that the body be "destroyed without a trace." According to Trotsky, Lenin assumed that if the two of them were killed, it would fall to Sverdlov and Bukharin to take over leadership of the communist party.|

Death

There are various theories on how Sverdlov died and none can be proven officially such as poisoning, beating, or flu. He is most commonly attributed to have died of either typhus or more likely the Spanish flu, after a political visit to Ukraine and Oryol. Kremlin doctors diagnosed him with the Spanish flu. Even as his illness progressed, he continued to perform his duties as chairman of the Central Committee. On 14 March 1919 Sverdlov lost consciousness and on the 16th he died at the age of 33. In 1915 Klavdia joined Yakov in exile in the village of Monastyrskoe, where together they ran a Bolshevik reading circle in the town, which, though illegal, escaped the notice of the local authorities. After the Bolshevik revolution, she worked with Sverdlov in the party secretariat. From 1920 until she retired in 1946, she worked in education, as a specialist in children's literature.

Sverdlov and Novgorodtseva had had two children: a son Andrei, who joined the NKVD and became notorious for persecuting other children of eminent Old Bolsheviks, and daughter Vera, born 1915.

Sverdlov's brother, Venyamin (1886–1939), emigrated to the US to become a banker, returning to Russia in 1917, where he was appointed head of the Road Research Institute. He was arrested on 13 October 1938, accused of belonging to the counter-revolutionary terrorist organisation, and shot on 16 April 1939.

Sverdlov's sister, Sofia (1883–1951), worked as a doctor married a businessman, Leonid Averbakh, and had two children, a son Leopold, who was shot in 1937, and a daughter, Ida, who married Genrikh Yagoda, the future head of the NKVD,

Legacy

thumb|right|300px|Snow-covered statue of Sverdlov in [[Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk]]

  • In a speech on 18 March 1919 Vladimir Lenin praised Sverdlov and his contributions to the revolution. He called Sverdlov successful "in expressing more fully and consistently than anybody else the most important and fundamental features of the proletarian revolution." was renamed "Sverdlovsk" in 1924 and returned to its former name in 1991.
  • In 1938 a number of Ukrainian settlements as well as the Sverdlov mine (part of Sverdlovantratsyt company in 2010s) were merged into the city of Sverdlovsk, which the Ukrainian government renamed Dovzhansk on 12 May 2016, although the renaming could not be enforced due to the Russo-Ukrainian War.
  • A few locations in the former Soviet Union still bear Sverdlov's name, in the Russian Federation and in Kyrgyzstan. Others have been renamed.
  • Sverdlov's life was dramatized in an eponymous biographical film released in 1940.

Notes

References

Sources

  • Leon Trotsky: Jacob Sverdlov – 1925 memorial essay