Jakow Christoforowitsch Peters

Jakow Peters

Yakov Peters ( Russian Яков Христофорович Петерс , Latvian Jēkabs Peters's * November 21 ^{. Jul} / 3. December  1886 ^greg. In volost Brinken in Hasenpoth , Courland Governorate , Russian Empire ; † 25. April 1938 in Moscow ) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and politicians. Like Felix Dzerzhinsky, Peters was one of the founders of the Soviet secret police Cheka . He held various party offices. In the period from July 7, 1918 to August 22, 1918, Peters held the office of chairman of the Cheka. In 1938 he fell victim to the Stalin purges .

Early years

Peters was born into a poor Latvian farming family in Courland. In 1904 he joined the Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party (LSDSP). In 1907 Peters was arrested for alleged involvement in the attempted murder of a factory manager in Libau , but was acquitted in 1908 by the Riga Military Court. Peters then emigrated to England , where he settled in London and joined the London group of the LSDSP and the British Socialist Party . Peters became famous in Great Britain when he was arrested along with four accomplices in connection with the siege of Sidney Street in 1911 . This was a fierce firefight between armed robbers who were wanted for a raid on a jewelry store in Houndsditch . a. several police officers had been killed, and police and military units. However, despite incriminating evidence, Peters and his companions were acquitted.

In London, Peters married Maisie Freeman, the daughter of a banker, and had a daughter in 1914. The family broke up when Peters went back to Riga in 1917 after the February Revolution . There Peters became one of the leaders of the LSDSP and agitated among the tsarist soldiers in the northern section of the Eastern Front . Due to the German advance, Peters went to Valmiera , where he worked as one of the editors of the party newspaper Cīņa . In addition, as a representative of the farmers of the Livonia Governorate , he took part in the discussions initiated by Kerensky on democratic reforms in the Russian Empire .

During the October Revolution

In Petrograd , Peters was actively involved in the October Revolution and its preparation as a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee . In particular, Peters prepared military units for the revolution. After the Bolsheviks seized power, Peters became a member of the Cheka College, Deputy Chairman of the Cheka and Chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Peters was instrumental in the uncovering of the Lockhart plot (after RH Bruce Lockhart ) and in the suppression of the uprising of the Left Social Revolutionaries of 1918. When Dzerzhinsky had to resign temporarily because of the uprising, Peters took over the office of chairman of the Cheka for a short time. As a high-ranking Cheka member, Peters was partly responsible for the increasingly brutal actions of the secret police and was involved in their first bloody operations. This included the persecution of suspected anarchists in Petrograd and Moscow. He was also involved in the liquidation of the Social Revolutionaries in the wake of the suppression of their uprising and was involved in investigations into Fanny Kaplan's assassination attempt on Lenin and in the subsequent Red Terror . In an article in the newspaper "Utro Moskvy" on November 4, 1918, Peters described the terrorist measures as hysterical.

In March 1919, Peters was appointed head of the internal defense of Petrograd and later commander of the Petrograd District. At a hearing before the United States Congress in the same year, he and Alexander Eiduck were described by an American diplomat as the "most bloodthirsty monster in Russia". After Yudenich's white troops withdrew , Peters took command of the Kiev district in August 1919 and became a member of the Tula Military Council after the fall of Kiev . In the winter of 1919/20, Peters took over the post of deputy chairman of the Council of Workers and Peasants Defense and was responsible for the use of railway lines for military purposes.

After the revolution

In 1920 Peters became the representative of the Cheka in the North Caucasus and was responsible as commissioner for the railway lines in this area. After that he was appointed agent of the Cheka in Turkestan until 1922 , where he was also a member of the local Communist Party office. In Turkestan he directed a number of military operations against the anti-Bolshevik units of Dutov , Annenkov and Enver Pasha . In 1922 Peters returned to Moscow and worked as a high-ranking official in the OGPU and in the workers 'and peasants' inspection . Later he took over the management of the east department of the GPU , which was newly founded on June 2, 1922 .

Peters was arrested during the Latvian Operation of the Great Terror and shot on April 25, 1938. After Stalin's death, he was rehabilitated in 1956.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Петерс Яков Христофорович. Retrieved April 30, 2018 (Russian). 
2. ^ RE Simmons and WW Welsh Tell Senators of Brutalities of Bolsheviki . In: The New York Times , February 16, 1919. Retrieved June 2, 2014. 

Web links

Commons : Yakov Peters  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography of Peters (Russian)
• Louise Bryant over Peters and Dzerzhinsky (English)