Ianyshev, Mikhail Petrovich

Born Aug. 30 (Sept. 11), 1884, in the village of Zhavoronkovo, in what is now Teikovo Raion, Ivanono Oblast; died July 1920 near the settlement of Gokhgeim, now the village of Peremozhnoe, Vasil’evka Raion, Zaporozh’e Oblast. Participant in the Russian revolutionary movement. Hero of the Civil War of 1918–20. Member of the Communist Party from 1905.

The son of a peasant, Ianyshev became a worker in 1898. He held jobs in Yaroslavl and in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where he took part in a strike in 1905. From 1906 to 1917 he lived abroad, in Germany and in the USA, where he helped organize the Federation of Russian Socialists of the Socialist Party of the USA.

Ianyshev returned to Russia in April 1917. Thereafter he served on the staff of the Moscow regional bureau of the RSDLP(B), and he took part in the October struggle for Soviet power. He later became a member of the executive committee of the Moscow soviet, chairman of the Moscow revolutionary tribunal, a member of the collegium of the Moscow extraordinary commission (cheka), and a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. During the attack of General Iudenich’s troops on Petrograd in the spring of 1919, Ianyshev commanded a detachment of Moscow Communists. In November 1919 he was made military commander of the 15th Inza Rifle Division on the Southern Front. He was killed in battle.

Ianyshev was buried by the Kremlin wall on Red Square on July 13, 1920.