Yakov Peters Soviet statesman and party leader Date of Birth: 03.12.1886 Country: Latvia

Biography of Yakov Peters

Yakov Peters was a Soviet statesman and party official. He was born into a peasant family and joined the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1904. He had been a member of the Russian Communist Party since 1904 and worked underground. Peters was an active participant in the 1905-1907 revolution. In 1909, he emigrated to Hamburg and then to London, where he was a member of the Communist Club and the British Socialist Party. In December 1910, he was arrested by the London police on charges of involvement in armed robberies and the murder of three police officers. While Peters was in pretrial detention at Brixton Prison in January 1911, he was killed during a police raid on a house on Sidney Street. The main suspect, his cousin Fritz Svaars, an anarchist, resisted arrest and was also killed in the raid.

In May 1911, Peters, along with other Latvian immigrants, stood trial and was acquitted. He returned to Russia in May 1917. During the October Revolution of 1917, he became a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

On December 7, 1917, when the Cheka (the predecessor of the KGB) was established, Peters was appointed a member of its Collegium and served as an assistant chairman and treasurer of the Cheka. In April 1918, together with Felix Dzerzhinsky, he led the operation to eliminate armed anarchist squads in Moscow. In the same month, he became the first secretary of the Cheka, a position that had never existed before. He also led the liquidation of Boris Savinkov's "Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom" in Moscow and Kazan.

On July 6, 1918, during an armed uprising by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Peters, along with other members of the Cheka Collegium, replaced the security detail at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in the Bolshoi Theatre with more reliable Latvian riflemen. On July 7, after the suppression of the uprising and Dzerzhinsky's resignation, Peters was appointed the temporary chairman of the Cheka by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars. On August 22, after Dzerzhinsky's return, Peters was appointed his deputy. In this position, he led the investigation into the case of Fanny Kaplan, who had shot at Lenin, and the operation known as the "Ambassadors' Conspiracy," which included arrests and investigations.

On March 27, 1919, Peters was appointed a member of the new Collegium of the Cheka by the Council of People's Commissars. However, he was replaced as deputy chairman of the Cheka by I.K. Xenofontov. Peters began working in the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal and became the head of the Anti-Counterrevolutionary Struggle Headquarters in Moscow. In May of the same year, he was sent to Petrograd as the extraordinary commissioner of the city and the front zone "to purge the city of counterrevolutionary bands" (with a mandate from the Council of Defense of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) and was appointed the chief of staff of the internal defense (later the chief of internal defense) of the city. Together with Stalin (authorized by the Central Committee and the Council of Defense), he led the suppression of the uprising at the "Krasnaya Gorka" fort.

In August 1919, Peters was appointed the commandant of the Kiev fortified area and the commander of the garrison until the Red Army left the city. In October of the same year, Peters was in Tula, serving as a member of the military council of the fortified area. In January 1920, he became the representative of the Cheka in the North Caucasus, and from July 1920, the representative of the Cheka in Turkestan, where he led operations against anti-Bolshevik bands led by Dutov, Annenkov, and Enver Pasha.

In February 1922, Peters was recalled to Moscow and appointed a member of the Collegium and the head of the Eastern Department of the State Political Directorate (GPU). While working in the Eastern Department, Peters became the chief inspector of the Border Troops of the GPU in 1925. In December 1927, on the 10th anniversary of the Cheka, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. On October 31, 1929, Yakov Peters was relieved of his duties as a member of the Collegium and head of the Eastern Department of the GPU. From 1930, he was a member of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). From 1930 to 1934, he served as the chairman of the Moscow Control Commission of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

Peters was arrested on November 26, 1937. On April 25, 1938, he was sentenced to the highest measure of punishment by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and executed on the same day on charges of participating in a counterrevolutionary organization.

After a review conducted by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office (N.I. Eitingon, who was imprisoned at the time, was interrogated, and Peters testified that he was an English spy), Peters was rehabilitated on March 3, 1956, by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

Materials used: Sharapov E.P. Naum Eitingon - Stalin's Punishing Sword. St. Petersburg, "Neva," 2003.