Iakovlev, Valentin Nikolaevich

Born Sept. 22, 1892, in Sumy; died Oct. 25, 1918, in Krasnoiarsk. One of the leaders in the struggle for Soviet power in Siberia. Member of the Communist Party from 1912.

Born into a noble family, Iakovlev entered the Kharkov Technological Institute in 1910. In November 1914 he was secretary of an all-Russian conference of the Bolshevik fraction of the Fourth State Duma and of representatives of local party organizations held in Ozerki, near Petrograd. Arrested at the conference, he was exiled to Eniseisk Province in 1915.

After the February Revolution in 1917, Iakovlev held a number of posts. He served as chairman of the Eniseisk soviet and was a member of the Siberian Regional Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B), the Krasnoiarsk Regional Bureau, and the Central Siberian Regional Bureau. In the same period he served as editor of the newspaper Sibirskaia pravda, chairman of the Krasnoiarsk committee of the RSDLP(B), and commissioner of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) for Central Siberia.

In 1918, Iakovlev was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Siberia, chairman of the Eniseisk provincial council of the national economy, and vice-chairman of the provincial executive committee. Iakovlev was shot by White Guards.