Anton Valek

(party pseudonym Iakov). Born 1887; died Apr. 8, 1919. Figure in the revolutionary movement. Member of the Communist Party from 1903.

Valek was born in Kharkov into the family of a worker. He worked in Kharkov at the railroad depot and participated in the armed uprising of 1905 there. He was arrested and exiled. He carried on Party work in the Urals, Middle Asia, and Siberia. In 1917 he was a member of the Petrograd Soviet. In 1918 he began Party work in Omsk, Tiumen, and Ekaterinburg. He led underground work in the rear of the White Guard troops of Kolchak. Valek’s (Iakov’s) group was discovered by enemy counterintelligence on Apr. 1, 1919, and on April 8, its members were slaughtered by the White Guards in the forest near the Verkh-Isetskii factory.