Vorobev, Iakov Zinovevich

(party pseudonym, Vasilii). Born Nov. 5 (17), 1885, in Vasil’kov, in present-day Kiev Oblast; died September 1919, in Kursk. A participant in the revolutionary movement and the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power in Nizhny Novgorod. Became a member of the Communist Party in 1907. Born into the family of a feldsher (physician’s assistant).

Vorob’ev graduated from the Odessa Dental Technician School in 1910. He was active in the revolutionary movement from 1902 on and conducted party work in Belaia Tserkov’, Odessa, Kiev, Saratov, and Nizhny Novgorod. He was repeatedly arrested and exiled. In March 1917 he became secretary of the Kanavino district (Nizhy Novgorod) committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik). He was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B). In October 1917 he was commander of the Kanavino Red Guard and a member of the Nizhny Novgorod Military Revolutionary Committee; a Red Guard detachment under his command disarmed a battalion of iunkers (officer-school students) on October 29 (November 11). In March 1918 he became chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Province cheka and a member of the province committee and the province executive committee. In September 1919 the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) sent him to do party work in Voronezh, but on his way there he was captured by the White Guards and killed.