Bloody mechanic of the Soviet power. Origin

In order to be healthy, you need to play sports. But which sport to choose so that it is suitable for the whole family. Swimming is the best. Even those people who have had injuries or problems with the spine can do it. It is not necessary to know what styles of swimming are there in order to attend classes without individual work with a trainer. It is enough to be able to stay on the water. Also, the advantages of swimming include the absence of stress on the joints during class. Swimming is good for pregnant women. In addition to the fact that practicing this sport strengthens physical health, they have a positive effect on emotional condition and restore the nervous system. It doesn't matter if you are a professional and know all styles of swimming or just visit the pool - the benefits for the body are the same.

Children and swimming

At what age can a child learn to swim? In the sports sections are accepted from the age of 6. However, parents can teach swimming from the first days. True, they should not do this in the form of training. It is necessary to accustom to water in the form of a game. Many children are afraid of water. This can be explained by a number of reasons. Maybe the first contact with water was unpleasant (too cold or excessively hot) or the baby took a sip of water, which caused discomfort. Maybe he just got shampoo in his eyes and it irritated him. There are situations when a child initially took a bath with pleasure, and then suddenly began to be afraid of water. In this case, you need to remember from what moment this fear appeared, and understand its cause. At this age, children should become familiar with the properties that water has.

After a year, you can teach your child to swim. And you need to start with the ability to keep your body on the water in a horizontal position. By the way, the use of a circle for swimming is not desirable. After all, the child cannot, being in a circle, take a horizontal position. And when the habit of swimming vertically is developed, teaching to stay on the water horizontally will become much more difficult, not to mention the dangers of using this swimming facility. It is better to use sleeves or collars.

After the child learns to float, you can show how the arms and legs should work. However, there is no need to delve too deeply into the theory. He does not need to know that there is a freestyle swimming or a butterfly. If you plan to send your child to the sports section, then the coach will take care of this. Otherwise, the child will be satisfied with the skills that he will receive on his own. Already in sports section the coach will talk about what styles of swimming exist.

Swimming for adults

If you have been in the sports section, then you yourself know how to organize a workout. If you do not have such experience, then better first classes to work with a trainer. He will teach you how to properly distribute the load during the lesson, talk about proper breathing and swimming technique. Depending on the purpose of your classes, the instructor will tell you which style is better to swim and how much time you need to devote to training. He will also teach you how to choose the optimal pace of work just for you. After all, training in slow pace may not give the desired results, but excessively high pace is not good for health. This issue should be taken especially seriously by people who decide to visit the pool in order to lose weight. Yes, and the choice of style must be approached with particular scrupulousness. The crawl style of swimming, for example, requires a lot of energy and is therefore effective in getting rid of excess calories.

Swimming lessons are indispensable for people who are recovering from injuries. After all, almost all other physical activities of this category of people are prohibited. Swimming is also good for pregnant women. True, the style of swimming during the lesson must be chosen based on the purpose of visiting the swimming pool.

Swimming styles

Regardless of which one you choose, all muscles will be toned and beautifully shaped. Going swimming, you will not only put your physical shape in order, but also prolong your life. There are different styles of swimming.

Breaststroke

No wonder we consider the very first breaststroke. This swimming style is most common among people who are not swimmers. This is due to the fact that the first thing a person is taught to stay on the water. Then, in this position, you need to try to overcome distances. If we slightly correct the movements of the arms and legs, then we get a breaststroke - a style of swimming, during which the movements of the arms and legs should be symmetrical. At

You should start training with footwork. They resemble the work of a frog's paws while swimming. At the same time, there should be a foam board in your hands. If the child is well kept on the water, then the board can not be used. The arms should be extended forward and the head down.

Bras is the slowest of all. This style of swimming is still very popular. After all, if it is necessary to overcome a long distance or view the space under water, then it is they who need to swim.

Crawl

The crawl is the fastest swimming style. However, in this case there are significant energy losses. Therefore, it will be very difficult to overcome a long distance. Freestyle swimming, in terms of coordination, is somewhat more difficult than breaststroke. A person floats, as in the previous case, on his stomach. Although the arms and legs work simultaneously, the direction of movement is different. The legs perform up and down movements, and the arms at this time carry out strokes along the body.

You need to start freestyle swimming lessons with theory. A young athlete must first learn to work with his feet. For this purpose, foam boards are used. With his hands, the child holds on to the board or side of the pool, and with his feet he moves up and down. Only after the swimmer learns to work with his feet, you need to connect the work of the hands. During freestyle swimming, the muscles of the back and chest are involved.

There is even a series that covers the life story of a swimmer who got injured, returned to his hometown and began to train children. The title of the film is "The Shell-shocked, or Freestyle Swimming".

Butterfly

This style is as complex as its name is beautiful. During swimming, the athlete really resembles a butterfly. However, from the point of view physical activity this is the heaviest style. The swimmer's arms and legs move at the same time. Hand movements are synchronous. They do rowing. But the movements of the legs resemble the movements of the tail of a mythical mermaid.

This style forces almost all the muscles of the shoulder girdle to work. In addition, during butterfly swimming, your muscles become more resilient and strong.

As in other styles, training should begin with footwork. The swimmer must have a special board in his hands, and he must carry out wave-like movements with his feet. At the next stage, you need to connect the work of the hands and breathe correctly.

Backstroke

This style is ideal for people suffering from back problems. It is neither fast nor slow. The movements of the arms and legs are similar to those of freestyle swimming. The only difference from the front crawl is that the swimmer is on his back.

You can train both with the use of additional swimming facilities, and without them. On the back, the child swims, working only with his feet. Since swimming on the back is studied, as a rule, after mastering the freestyle, the young athlete is familiar with the nature of the movement of the legs. Therefore, almost immediately you can connect the work of the hands.

When swimming on your back, the latissimus dorsi performs the main work. The muscles of the back of the thigh are also involved.

Breathing while swimming should be calm. Regardless of the style, inhalation is carried out above the water, and exhalation into the water. In addition, the swimmer must know that inhalation must be done 2 times faster than exhalation. In order to learn how to breathe correctly, it will take some time and considerable patience. There is a whole range of exercises for the formation correct breathing while swimming.

In what order children should be taught different styles, there is no consensus. Many start with the breaststroke and end with the dolphin. However, this is for the coach to decide.

Meals while swimming

When swimming, you need to monitor your diet. Since exercising in the pool requires a lot of energy, you need to take care of replenishing it. And the body receives it as a result of the breakdown of fats and carbohydrates. This does not mean that the body does not need protein. Their role in the body is the construction of muscle tissues and their restoration. If there are not enough fats and carbohydrates in the diet, then the body begins to break down proteins. Roughly speaking, there is a process of burning muscle tissue. This should be avoided.

Before heading to the swimming pool, you can eat foods that contain slow carbohydrates. Thus, the body will receive enough large stock the energy you need during your workout. In order for the muscles not to suffer during intense training, it is necessary to eat foods containing protein before training, in addition to carbohydrate foods. But with the amount of fat you need to be careful. Their norm should not exceed 5 grams. And be sure to follow water regime. After all, dehydration will negatively affect the state of the body as a whole.

The diet depends on how intense the workout will be. You need to eat about 2 hours before training.

Do you want to get a charge of positive emotions? Then you go to the pool

Swimming has many benefits. Firstly, the whole family can play in the pool. Secondly, these activities bring not only health benefits, but also pleasure. After all, not everyone enjoys intense exercise. And in the water, fatigue is practically not felt. Swimming in the pool is a great cardio workout. And there is no other sport where the phase of work and rest is constantly changing. During the lesson, it is better to use different styles of swimming. The pool has been created to the maximum comfortable conditions for supporting physical form in order.

Children especially like to visit the pool. Try to get them to exercise. And they will go to the pool with pleasure. The main thing is not to turn a visit to the pool into an intense workout. Let them choose a free swimming style and enjoy the emotions they get.

130 years ago, on June 3, 1885, Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov was born. The chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (the formal head of the RSFSR) was a real gray cardinal of the revolution. Together with Trotsky, Sverdlov was one of the most sinister figures in history. Soviet Russia. All the most terrible blows to Russian civilization were initiated and organized by Sverdlov. Cruel and vindictive, nicknamed the "black devil of the revolution", Sverdlov openly advocated revolutionary terror, initiated the "red terror", a strike on the village and decossackization (in fact, the genocide of the military class of Russia - the Cossacks). It is believed that Sverdlov was also behind the brutal murder of the Romanov family, the former sovereign. Regicide was a fixed idea for him.

At the same time, Sverdlov was distinguished by phenomenal organizational skills, a unique memory (he remembered everything and everyone), a talent for selecting and placing the necessary personnel in their places. He became a real gray cardinal of the revolution. Therefore, it is not surprising that, according to the English journalist R. Wilton, who visited revolutionary Russia, "at first, the Bolshevik regime was dominated not by Lenin (Ulyanov), the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, but by Sverdlov ... the chairman of the all-powerful All-Russian Central Executive Committee." Lenin headed the Central Committee of the party and the government, and Sverdlov - the Secretariat of the Central Committee and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets (VTsIK). But the Secretariat of the Central Committee was the only apparatus of the Central Committee, so work with party bodies in the field closed on Yakov Sverdlov. A Council People's Commissars(SNK) acted through the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. A very convenient formula was created: “The All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in the person of its Presidium, decides,” that is, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee did not collect, everything was decided by the Presidium, in fact, Sverdlov himself. "Leader number two" had his own grouping within the party - "Sverdlovites". Moreover, his supporters were so strong that at the end of his life, Yakov Mikhailovich was ready to oppose Lenin himself. After his death, almost all the "Sverdlovites" went over to Trotsky's camp, became "Trotskyists". Many were later "cleansed" under Stalin.

Yakov Mikhailovich (Yankel Movshovich) Sverdlov was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Nizhny Novgorod. His father was the master engraver Movsha Izrailevich Sverdlov. Mother - housewife Elizaveta Solomonovna. Yankel-Yakov learned to read at home, graduated from the city elementary school and was assigned to the gymnasium. Jacob was distinguished by his amazing mind, memory, curiosity, he read a lot from childhood. He was distinguished by energy and exceptional performance. At the same time, he was a teenager with "character". Already in the gymnasium, he became interested in the “revolution”, dreamed of “secret societies”.

Yakov left the gymnasium, left his father's house. The exact reason is unknown. Perhaps it's a hooligan trick. Yakov moved to the Nizhny Novgorod suburb of Kanavino, where he got a job as a student in a pharmacy. However, Yakov did not stay long in the pharmacy. He was proud and wanted more than to slowly grow up in career ladder. Argued with a pharmacist and lost his job. For some time, Yakov lived as a free semi-intellectual (" freelancer"), interrupted odd jobs, tutoring, correspondence of roles for theaters, etc. In fact, Yakov lived at that time on the "bottom", having the appropriate acquaintances in the criminal and semi-criminal environment. Pulled it from the "bottom" best friend childhood Lubotsky, who became interested in politics and joined the local social democratic organization. Marxism was then a completely legal idea, not persecuted. Jacob was actively involved in revolutionary activity.

As a revolutionary, he showed organizational talent, the party authorities sent him as an emissary to other cities to form party organizations. During the revolution of 1905, Yakov was sent to Yekaterinburg to restore the local defeated party organization. In the Urals, Sverdlov deployed widely, began to create fighting squads of social democrats, socialist revolutionaries, anarchists and criminals. At the same time, Jacob showed another of his leading qualities - pathological cruelty. He united around himself the most aggressive and cruel elements. "Brigade" Sverdlov was called "Combat Detachment people's armament"(BONV). The activities of the "brigade" covered a significant area, including Perm, Yekaterinburg, Ufa, Nizhny Tagil, Chelyabinsk and other cities and settlements. BONV acted within the framework of strict secrecy. The checks of future fighters were very characteristic, similar to those that existed in various world mafia and terrorist organizations. So, one of the future murderers of the Romanov family, Yermakov, on assignment in 1907, killed a police agent and cut off his head. Thus, the fighters of the "brigade" were tied with blood.

They "hunted" the "Black Hundreds" (right-wing leaders), the police. The treasury was replenished with "ex" (from the word "expropriation"), attacking the post office, transports with money, treasuries. They organized a racket of wealthy people: either give money for "revolutionary needs", or die.

In 1906 Sverdlov was arrested. But there were no witnesses (apparently, they wanted to live), and good lawyers were hired. Therefore, the terrorist received only 2 years in prison. Jacob did not suffer in prison. The frail bespectacled man was a real "authority", the head of a large organized crime group. Meanwhile, his brother - Veniamin Mikhailovich Sverdlov, who was also a revolutionary, fled abroad, went to the USA, organized a bank there. One of his comrades was the famous Sydney Reilly. Thus, one of the channels of influence of the "financial international" on the revolutionary movement in Russia was created. In the future, Sverdlov and Trotsky will become the main conductors of the plans for the "financial international" ("world behind the scenes") in Russia.

Sverdlov continued to follow the revolutionary path. More than once he was arrested, imprisoned, in 1910 he was exiled to the Narym Territory for 3 years, but escaped. Settled in St. Petersburg, for some time he was the editor of the Pravda newspaper. In 1911 he was again exiled to the Narym Territory of the Tomsk Governorate for 4 years. Fled in 1912. In 1913 he was exiled to Turukhansk. The February Revolution freed Sverdlov. He arrived in the Urals. He organized a party conference and moved to the capital as the "leader" of the Urals.

At the 7th (April) conference, the RSDLP tried to get closer to Lenin, supporting his line "on behalf of the Urals" and becoming his " right hand". In the new composition of the Central Committee, he fussed and took the post of head of the Secretariat. The organ was considered secondary, but under Sverdlov it gained paramount importance. Sverdlov got the opportunity to control local party cadres and finances. It was Sverdlov who ensured the unification of the supporters of Lenin and Trotsky, who arrived from the USA and tried to take the place of the leader. After October revolution Yakov Sverdlov proposed Trotsky to the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and he himself climbed into the post of chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

Sverdlov turned out to be irreplaceable person. Provided the leaders of the Bolsheviks with food, things, apartments. Especially courted Lenin. Controlling the cadres, he skillfully placed his people, creating his own power group. Attached his relatives and friends. His wife became the head of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, brother Veniamin, called from America, became People's Commissar of Railways, distant relative Heinrich Yagoda ended up in the Cheka. In the Soviets, he ousted the competitors of the Bolsheviks - the Mensheviks, anarchists, the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, and after the rebellion, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Having become the second person in the Soviet state, Sverdlov initiated the most terrible measures aimed at the pogrom " old Russia". Yakov Sverdlov actively fomented the "Red Terror", launched an attack on Russian peasantry, that is, provoked a real peasant war, which became one of the bloodiest pages of the Civil War and cost Russia hundreds of thousands of lives. Sverdlov, apparently, was the organizer of the murder of the Romanov family, which wore iconic character.

Apparently, it was Sverdlov who ordered the assassination attempt on Lenin. Fanny Kaplan was a friend of Yakov Sverdlov's sister. In 1918, Sverdlov concentrated enormous power in his hands. He not only decided how to carry out political decisions, but also determined what to carry out and what not. The last obstacle on the way to full power was Lenin. No wonder Fanny was shot and burned on the orders of Sverdlov, before she spoke. The classic "ends in the water." After Lenin was wounded, Yakov Sverdlov seized full power in the country for a short period of time. At the same time, Sverdlov used the failed assassination attempt to his advantage - he began a campaign of mass terror and decossackization.

Then he began a new offensive against the peasantry - the forced creation of communes. "Communization" was very different from the future collectivization. All property was subject to socialization, the peasants had to live in common barracks, give their children for collective education and work for a portion of food. In fact, they planned to drive the entire Russian peasantry into a giant concentration camp, turning them into slaves most population, even take their children away from them. More information about the destructive activities of Sverdlov can be found in the book of the historian V. Shambarov “Sverdlov. Occult Roots of the October Revolution.

Sverdlov's death is mysterious. Yakov Sverdlov was in excellent health, but died at the age of 33. By official version, Sverdlov was mowed down by a Spanish flu (Spanish flu) when he was traveling from Kharkov to Moscow. According to another version, His Majesty chance intervened in the course of history. In Orel, Sverdlov's special train was stopped due to a railroad strike. Yakov Sverdlov decided to personally intervene, go out and reassure people. He was a good speaker, knew how to take control of the crowd, manipulate people, cut off opponents with sharp phrases. The head of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was the permanent chairman at all congresses and conferences, spoke at rallies. However, the workers were furious and pelted Sverdlov with stones and logs prepared for steam locomotives. The chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee fell, lost consciousness, and lay on the frozen ground for some time. The guard dispersed the people, but the deed was done. Sverdlov arrived in Moscow beaten and sick. I developed pneumonia. March 16, 1919 Sverdlov died.

The death of Sverdlov was a positive development for the history of Russia. A number of his projects were cancelled. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee was headed by Lenin's protege - Kalinin. Yakov Mikhailovich was much smarter than Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev and other "internationalists", and his death made it much easier for Stalin and his supporters to fight for the future of Russia.

Sverdlov Yakov Mikhailovich (real name - Movshovich Yankel (born May 23 (June 4), 1885 - death March 16, 1919) party and statesman, one of the organizers of the October Revolution. Member of the Communist Party since 1901. He took part in the Revolution of 1905-07. in the Urals. Member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), RCP (b). Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (formal head of the first Soviet state) in November 1917 - March 1919.

It was this person who transmitted the order, it was he who became the inspirer of the monstrous "", it was he who initiated the so-called "Decossackization", when about 1 million were brutally killed, including buried alive. Don Cossacks including women and infants. Until March 1919, not a single bloody global action of the Bolsheviks took place, which would not have been initiated by Yakov Sverdlov, who was called the "devil of the Bolsheviks."

Origin. early years

Yakov Mikhailovich was born in Nizhny Novgorod. Father Miraim (Movsha) Izrailevich owned an engraving workshop. Yakov had brothers (Zinovy, Benjamin, Lev, Alexander, Herman) and two sisters. Yakov studied at the Nizhny Novgorod city gymnasium (1896-1900), but did not finish the course and began working in a pharmacy. In his early questionnaires, Yakov wrote that he belonged to the Jewish faith, coming from the townspeople.

Lenin wrote about Sverdlov's youth as follows: "In the first period of his activity, while still quite a youth, he, having hardly been imbued with political consciousness, immediately and completely surrendered to the revolution."

revolutionary activity. 1901-1917

1901 - Member of the RSDLP. 1903 - after a split at the II Congress of the RSDLP, he became a Bolshevik and a professional revolutionary. 1905, September - sent to the Urals as a representative agent of the Central Committee. 1905 - organizer revolutionary speeches In Ekaterinburg. 1905, October - created and headed the Yekaterinburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies. 1906 - Yakov Mikhailovich in Perm. Repeatedly sentenced to imprisonment and exile, in prison he was engaged in self-education.

From June 10, 1906 to September 1909, Yakov was in the prisons of the Urals. 1909, December 19 - was again arrested in Moscow. 1910, March 31 - was exiled for 3 years to the Narym Territory. 1910 - escaped from the Narym exile to St. Petersburg. He was the editor of the Pravda newspaper. He actively corresponded with Lenin, and was co-opted to the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP.

May 5, 1911 - Sverdlov was sentenced to 4 years in exile in the Narym region of the Tomsk province. 1912 - in Narym, Sverdlov meets Stalin, who escaped from exile in August. Yakov Mikhailovich also managed to escape from Narym in December. 1913, February - together with Stalin, he was extradited as an Okhrana agent and exiled to Turukhansk. Link to the north Yenisei province they spent some time in the same house. After they began to live in different apartments and their meetings became rare. 1913, October 1 - at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, the issue of organizing an escape from exile of Sverdlov and Stalin was discussed, but it never took place. March 1917 - Sverdlov was released from Turukhansk exile.

After February Revolution

1917, early April - he arrives in Yekaterinburg, where he directs work I Ural Free Conference of Bolsheviks and creates a regional committee of the Bolsheviks. For many, it was a surprise that in just a few weeks Sverdlov became the "favorite of the Ural workers", who already on April 15, 1917, at the Ural Party Conference, elected Yakov Mikhailovich as a delegate to the All-Russian April Conference of the Bolsheviks. It was at this conference that Lenin and Sverdlov met, and this meeting decided the fate of the latter. By the end of April 1917, unknown in the highest party circles, Sverdlov was elected a member of the Central Committee and the first secretary of the Central Committee of the party. A few months later he was already directing the organization of the 6th Party Congress.

October 1917 - Yakov Sverdlov, as a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, was preparing an uprising in Petrograd, took part in the work of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets as chairman of the Bolshevik faction. The day after the victory of October, Kamenev became chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets (head of the Soviet "parliament"). However, 11 days later, he leaves this position, and on November 8, 1917, Sverdlov was appointed to the post of chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (he was “elected” at the insistence of Lenin).

Lenin instructed Sverdlov to open the Constituent Assembly and try to "pull" its deputies over to the side of the Bolsheviks. However, Sverdlov could not cope with this "difficult" task. In his speech, opening the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918, Sverdlov Yakov Mikhailovich called for the merciless destruction of exploiters and enemies new government. At the beginning of 1918, Sverdlov was elected a member of the Orgburo and appointed chairman of the commission for the development of the Constitution of the RSFSR.

"The Devil of the Bolsheviks" and his Red Terror

According to Sverdlov, terror was to become the policy of the young Soviet state. A year and 4 months of his stay in power became a bloody bacchanalia revolutionary terror. Yakov Mikhailovich urged not to allow the "allies" of the Bolsheviks - the Left Social Revolutionaries and anarchists - to work in government institutions, to ruthlessly crack down on the bourgeoisie. It was Sverdlov with his "Ural militants" who became the organizers of the execution royal family and the physical destruction of the great princes of the Romanov family. In Moscow, Goloshchekin, who led the execution of the family, received appropriate instructions from Sverdlov, and one of his associates, Yakov Yurovsky, carried out the sentence.

1918, May 19-20 - in his speech at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the "devil of the Bolsheviks" stated that "... if in the cities we have already managed to practically destroy our big bourgeoisie, then we still cannot say the same about the countryside," what to kindle in villages civil war by inciting the rural poor against the kulaks is the main task of the Bolsheviks.

In response to the murders of Volodarsky and Uritsky in June and August 1918, Sverdlov created the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, which punished all "suspicious" ones. FROM " light hand” Yakov Mikhailovich, the era of the “Red Terror” began, in September 1918, the cities that were in the hands of the Bolsheviks were covered in blood. Sverdlov proposed to issue a decree on commanders who would kindle a fire among the peasantry fratricidal war.

Yakov Sverdlov insisted on "decossackization" - the total destruction of the Cossacks, on his hands the blood of tens (hundreds) of thousands of tortured old men, women, children, teenagers from Cossack villages. 1919, January 24 - a directive is issued on the total extermination of the Cossacks, where it was said: “To carry out mass terror against the White Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; to carry out merciless mass terror against all Cossacks in general who took any direct or indirect part in the struggle against Soviet power... to confiscate bread and force all surpluses to be poured into specified items, this applies to bread as well as to all other agricultural products ...

All commissars who were appointed to certain Cossack settlements were asked to show maximum firmness and steadily carry out these instructions. Being the head of the Soviet "parliament", Yakov Mikhailovich tried to concentrate maximum power in the state in his hands.

Contemporaries about Sverdlov

Contemporaries spoke of him as a cruel and inflexible leader who did not disdain any means to achieve his goals.

His speech is always calm and reasonable, his intelligent appearance with the same pince-nez and wedge-shaped beard, his almond-shaped, always a little sad eyes, rather suggested a zemstvo doctor than the leader of one of the bloodiest regimes in world history. A. Lunacharsky wrote about Sverdlov as follows: “Of course, there was a lot of inner fire in him, but outwardly he was a completely icy person. When not on the podium, he always spoke in a quiet voice, walked quietly, all his gestures were slow.

However, those who were familiar with Sverdlov knew how deceptive this appearance of an intelligent doctor was. Such a powerful force, such an iron conviction in the work he was doing, was felt in this man, that involuntarily he was recognized as the unspoken leader of the entire party. The quiet voice of this gray cardinal” inspired horror many times greater than the heart-rending cries of Lenin.

Assassination attempt on Lenin

AT recent times there was an assumption that Yakov stood behind him in August 1918, striving to seize power. He had a proven detachment of terrorist fighters personally devoted to Sverdlov. After the assassination attempt, Lenin quickly went on the mend, which confused all Sverdlov's plans.

Personal life

Even in his youth, Yakov married E. F. Schmidt. When he was 20 years old, the daughter of E. Ya. Sverdlov was born. However, the family broke up. The revolutionary soon married Claudia Timofeevna Novgorodtseva. In Soviet circles, she introduced herself as Olga Novgorodtseva. The young woman kept the “diamond fund of the Politburo” in her apartment. The money saved by Novgorodtseva could be needed by the Bolsheviks, in case of loss of power, for the development revolutionary movement and the comfortable existence of the Bolsheviks.

1911 - son Andrei was born in the family. In his younger years, he was not friends with the NKVD, he fell into their hands twice. AT personal file son of a Bolshevik, it is said that Andrey was arrested for anti-Soviet statements. Despite the dislike for the Soviet system, later the son of Sverdlov entered the service in the NKGB and the Ministry of State Security of the USSR. As a colonel, Andrei again ended up in prison, but court was avoided thanks to. After 2 years, there were more children in the Sverdlov family - a daughter was born. Nothing is known about the life of Vera's daughter.

Last days. Death

Sverdlov's death is mysterious. Jacob could boast of excellent health, but died at 33. According to the official version, the cause of Sverdlov's death was the Spaniard (Spanish flu), he fell ill when he was traveling from Kharkov to Moscow. According to another version, His Majesty chance intervened in the course of history. In Orel, his special train was stopped due to a railroad strike. Jacob decided to personally intervene, go out and calm the people. He was an excellent speaker, he could take control of the crowd, manipulate the crowd, cut off opponents with sharp phrases.

The head of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was the permanent chairman at all congresses and conferences, and spoke at rallies. But the workers were furious and pelted Sverdlov with stones and logs prepared for steam locomotives. Yakov fell, lost consciousness, and for some time remained lying on the frozen ground. The guard dispersed the people, but the deed was done. The Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee arrived in Moscow beaten and sick. I developed pneumonia. March 16, 1919 - Yakov Sverdlov died.

1935 - was opened owned by Jacob Mikhailovich safe. Its contents were so shocking that they were classified on long years: false passports, jewelry, royal credit cards, banknotes ... But the head of Emperor Nicholas II was not there, which was rumored among the people.

The son of Yakov Sverdlov, Andrei, being a banal provocateur, was able to rise to the rank of NKVD investigator and conducted the affairs of the party elite. He showed himself as a cruel and inexorable person, participated in torture. AT later years went into science and began to teach at the university.

1940 - the role of Yakov in the footage feature film performed by his brother Herman, which did not please Stalin. The shots with German Sverdlov were forced to be re-shot with a professional actor.

"Fiery revolutionary" kept great amount jewels and gold

The "Black Devil", as he was called, was born 130 years ago. There is no unity in the date of birth of Yakov Sverdlov, some call the third, others - the fourth of June.

In 1994 in former archive The Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU discovered a letter from Heinrich Yagoda to I.V. Stalin dated July 27, 1935. In it, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs reported: a personal safe of Ya.M. Sverdlov, which has not been opened for 16 years since his death, and the key to which has been lost. There were gold coins of royal minting for an astronomical sum, over seven hundred gold items with precious stones, a lot of blank passports and completed passports in the name of Sverdlov himself and no one famous people, bonds of the tsarist time.

Why and for what purposes the “fiery revolutionary” kept all this in a personal safe remains a mystery to this day.

Yakov Sverdlov is generally considered one of the most mysterious figures Russian revolution.

Firstly, real name it is not Sverdlov at all. His father, the tradesman Miraim-Movsha Izrailevich Gauhmann, with his wife Elizaveta Solomonovna, moved from the Pale of Settlement into the depths of Russia and settled in Nizhny Novgorod, where he signed up as an artisan under the name of Movsha Sverdlin, later turning into Sverdlov. Not everything is clear with the name. According to the historian I.F. Plotnikov, "according to some sources, Sverdlov was called Yeshua-Solomon Movshevich from birth, and according to others - Yankel Miraimovich." And when he became a revolutionary, then his name was either "Comrade Andrei", then "Max", then "Mikhail Permyakov", then "Smirnov" ...

The fate of his relatives was also surprising. His older brother Zinovy ​​became the godson of Maxim Gorky, who actually adopted him, turning him into Peshkov. Which, however, did not prevent Zinovy ​​from emigrating, ending up in France, and then enrolling in Foreign Legion, become a French general and receive the Legion of Honor. The career of another brother, Benjamin, was less successful. After mysterious adventures in the USA in 1938, he was arrested and then shot as a "Trotskyite".

Like many other Bolsheviks, young Yasha did not abuse his studies at all. He graduated from only four classes of the gymnasium, then began to study pharmacy. But soon he retrained as a professional revolutionary - he became a well-known underground worker in Nizhny Novgorod. Then everything was the same as with his other colleagues: agitation, proclamations, expropriations, prisons, exiles, escapes ...

He “sat” successfully: in 1912, in Narym, Yakov Mikhailovich met Stalin. And then Turukhansk ended up with him. They even lived in the same house for a while. Here is how Stalin describes some of the details of their life together with Sverdlov in exile: “We mainly hunted by catching nelma. It didn't take much specialization. They also went hunting. I had a dog, I named her "Yashka". Of course, this was unpleasant for Sverdlov: he is Yashka, and the dog is Yashka ... ".

In general special problems revolutionaries in tsarist exile did not know. They lived on government benefits, so they could not work. In addition, they were also fed from the party fund, which was made up of expropriations, that is, bank robberies, as well as contributions from capitalists who sympathized with them.

At the 7th (April) conference of the RSDLP, Sverdlov first personally met with V.I. Lenin and began to carry out his orders. Then he was elected a member of the Central Committee and headed the then created Secretariat of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, becoming the main organizer of the promotion and placement of personnel in key positions.

It was then that he received the nickname "Black Devil" - the color of the leather jacket, which he never took off in public, and which later became the Bolshevik fashion. However, he also had leather riding breeches, and even a cap. Outwardly, Sverdlov was a brunette with sharp features and a thick, powerful bass. “Nothing, Sverdlov will say it to them in a Sverdlovsk bass, and the matter will be settled,” Lenin usually said in difficult cases.

Unlike the eloquent Leon Trotsky, Sverdlov did not make pathetic speeches, did not travel around the fronts in luxurious royal carriages, did not give interviews foreign press, did not flash on the pages of newspapers. He always remained as if in the shadows.

His intelligent appearance with the same pince-nez and wedge-shaped beard suggested, rather, a university professor than a leader of the party of revolutionaries. Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote about Sverdlov as follows: “Of course, there was a lot of inner fire in him, but outwardly he was an absolutely icy person. When he was not on the podium, he always spoke in a quiet voice, walked quietly, all his gestures were slow. Sverdlov had a phenomenal memory, he was called " notebook Lenin”, he remembered everything and everyone.

When the Bolsheviks began to be hunted as German spies, Sverdlov personally came to Lenin and organized his transition to an underground position, hiding him near the Razliv station near Sestroretsk, while he himself remained in Petrograd to organize the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

However, Sverdlov was called the “Black Devil”, probably, not only for the black leather jacket. Historians give data on his involvement in black magic. So, in exile, Sverdlov acquired a dog, which he named Dog. The dog was endlessly attached to his master and never parted with him. At the end of 1916, the Dog died. Yakov Mikhailovich grieved terribly. He asked a local hunter to tear off his corpse true friend skin and dress it up. And then he took it everywhere with him. In the Kremlin, this skin was always lying by Sverdlov's bed. It's about about the ritual of black magic. With such rituals, they try to “pull” the spirit of a deceased creature to the earth, not to allow him to go to another world in order to use it for his own purposes.

At the suggestion of Lenin, Sverdlov, as the chief personnel officer, was appointed chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers and soldiers' deputies. He carried out the main work on the creation of Soviet authorities in the center and in the field. “Sometimes it seemed that as V.I. Lenin came to Russia after the victory of the February Revolution with ready-made political blueprints for the entire revolution, so Ya.M. Sverdlov appeared from a distant exile with ready-made organizational drawings of all the work of the party and with ready plan distribution of the main groups of workers by industry of work, ”Grigory Zinoviev later recalled.

It was Sverdlov who opened the first meeting Constituent Assembly January 5, 1918, announcing the "Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People", in which Russia was proclaimed a republic. He was also chairman of the commission for drafting the Constitution of the RSFSR, which declared the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Things went to the fact that not Lenin, but Sverdlov began to be called the "red tsar." But still, until the complete "accession" of Sverdlov, the authority of Ilyich, who was much higher, interfered.

In this regard, the assassination attempt on Lenin on August 30, 1918 looks very mysterious. Researcher V.E. Shambarov directly points to Sverdlov's attempt to kill Lenin in order to completely seize power.

“If you look at who at that moment benefited from eliminating Lenin, then Sverdlov won the most,” he writes. - After the assassination attempt, Sverdlov was the first to arrive in the Kremlin. Sverdlov's wife reports that on the same evening he occupied Lenin's office, crushing under him the Council of People's Commissars, the Central Committee, and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Roy Medvedev writes the same: “When Lenin was seriously wounded by the Socialist-Revolutionary Kaplan, Sverdlov became the de facto head of the Soviet state».

It was Sverdlov who conducted a hasty investigation into the case of Fani Kaplan, it was on his orders that Kaplan was hastily shot and burned in a metal barrel on the territory of the Kremlin. Although she was a friend of Yakov Sverdlov's sister.

Through his relatives, Yakov Mikhailovich was connected with the foreign backstage. Researcher Pyotr Multatuli writes that even before the revolution, his brother Benjamin traveled to the United States, where he worked as a banker for some time. And there he entered into contacts with the Kuhn, Leib and K bank and the banker Jacob Schiff, who, as already established, financed the Bolsheviks, as well as the “transfer” of Trotsky and a group of his militants from the USA to Russia.

Sverdlov was famous for pathological cruelty. His desire to always go to extreme measures surprised even his party comrades. In the Urals, on the eve of the 1905 revolution, Sverdlov created an organization called the Combat Detachment of People's Armaments. It was an honor to be in the "brigade" of Sverdlov, but not everyone passed the test. So, one of the future killers of the royal family, Yermakov, "on the instructions of the party" in 1907 killed a police agent and cut off his head.

Sverdlov was the author of cruel directives prescribing ferocious punitive measures in the suppression of Cossack uprisings against Soviet power on the Don. After the assassination attempt on Lenin, Sverdlov signed an appeal "on the transformation Soviet Republic into a single military camp”, supplemented by the decree “On the Red Terror” issued by the Council of People's Commissars on September 5.

In May 1918, Sverdlov provoked the start of a fratricidal war in the countryside. In his report “On the Tasks of the Soviets in the Countryside,” he says: “Only if we can split the countryside into two irreconcilably hostile camps, if we can kindle there the same civil war that was going on not so long ago in the cities, if we we will be able to restore the rural poor against the rural bourgeoisie, only if we can say that we are doing in relation to the countryside what we were able to do for the cities. And in July 1918, he declared: “I want to dwell on the issue of the death penalty. I must point out that the Revolutionary Tribunal, in its first decision on the death penalty, showed, in my deep conviction, that it correctly takes into account this moment that we are currently experiencing."

Regicide was for him obsession. At the time of the massacre in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlov was in Moscow. Adventurer V.N. Orlov, who posed as a white counterintelligence officer, recalled: “In July 1918, when I was interviewing agents in the Cheka building, a messenger brought a telegram addressed to Dzerzhinsky, who was next to me. He quickly read it, turned as pale as death, jumped to his feet and, exclaiming "Again they act without consulting me!", He rushed out of the room. Dzerzhinsky hastened to the Kremlin. What in the name of all that's holy happened?

The next day we got the news. Imperial family was shot without the knowledge of the Cheka! Independently, at the direction of Sverdlov and one of the highest bosses in Central Committee Communist Party!

According to the general opinion that prevailed in the Cheka, in the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Kremlin, the decision to kill was made and implemented by the government of Sverdlov. He carried out the preparations in secret from his comrades, and only after the execution he confronted them with a fait accompli.

The "Black Devil" died unexpectedly, at the age of only 34, although, as they said, he had good health. According to the official version, he allegedly fell ill with a Spanish flu. And so, on March 16, 1919, Sverdlov died and was buried with pomp near the Kremlin wall. “We lowered the proletarian leader into the grave, who did the most for the organization of the working class, for its victory,” Lenin said mournfully at the funeral.

Doctor of Law Arkady Vaksberg wrote: “The exact cause of his death is unknown. At the same time, a rumor, apparently not without foundation, spread that in the city of Orel he was mortally beaten by workers, but this fact was supposedly hidden so as not to “disgrace the revolution” and “not to stir up even more anti-Semitic passions.”

The French communist writer Louis Aragon wrote: “Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, Lenin’s most faithful comrade, who became the first chairman of the Central Executive Committee, that is, the first head of the new Soviet state, and who, unfortunately for the whole world, had to die from a Spanish flu at thirty-four of the year. I said “unfortunately for the whole world”, because, of course, if he had survived, Sverdlov, and not Stalin, would have succeeded Lenin. Probably, Stalin understood this no worse than Aragon.

However, there could be another reason for the unexpected death of the Black Devil, a very banal one - money. The fact is that Sverdlov was the keeper of a kind of "Bolshevik obshchak". This was done by his second wife - Claudia Timofeevna, nee Novgorodtseva. The "Diamond Fund of the Politburo" was hidden in her apartment. Part of this "common fund" was probably later discovered in a safe in Sverdlov's office.

... They say that when a person dies, all his vices or virtues are imprinted on his face. From the "fiery revolutionary", as usual, they removed death mask. Seeing her, psychiatrist Yevgeny Chernosvitov exclaimed: "The Sverdlov mask is the embodiment of evil, it is unpleasant to look at it!"

Especially for "Century"

May 22 last year marked the 130th anniversary of the birth of Yakov Sverdlov. The man who supported the execution of the royal family, the leader of the "red terror" in the Urals. In his honor, the city of Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlovsk in 1924 and retained this name until the early 2000s, and the region to this day is called Sverdlovsk, which was formed instead of the Ural province under the tsars. So what was he really like, this bloody mechanic of the Soviet power, nicknamed the "black devil"?

"Fiery Revolutionary" kept a huge amount of jewelry and gold
In 1994, a letter from Genrikh Yagoda to I.V. Stalin dated July 27, 1935. In it, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs reported: a personal safe of Ya.M. Sverdlov, which has not been opened for 16 years since his death, and the key to which has been lost. There were gold coins of royal minting for an astronomical sum, more than seven hundred gold items with precious stones, a lot of blank passports and completed passports in the name of Sverdlov himself and unknown persons, bonds of the tsarist time.

Why and for what purposes the “fiery revolutionary” kept all this in a personal safe remains a mystery to this day.

Yakov Sverdlov is generally considered one of the most mysterious figures of the Russian revolution.
Firstly, his real name is not Sverdlov at all. His father, the tradesman Miraim-Movsha Izrailevich Gauhmann, with his wife Elizaveta Solomonovna, moved from the Pale of Settlement into the depths of Russia and settled in Nizhny Novgorod, where he signed up as an artisan under the name of Movsha Sverdlin, later turning into Sverdlov. Not everything is clear with the name. According to the historian I.F. Plotnikov, "according to some sources, Sverdlov was called Yeshua-Solomon Movshevich from birth, and according to others - Yankel Miraimovich." And when he became a revolutionary, then his name was either "Comrade Andrei", then "Max", then "Mikhail Permyakov", then "Smirnov" ...

The fate of his relatives was also surprising. His older brother Zinovy ​​became the godson of Maxim Gorky, who actually adopted him, turning him into Peshkov. That, however, did not prevent Zinovy ​​from emigrating, ending up in France, then enrolling in the Foreign Legion, becoming a French general and receiving the Order of the Legion of Honor. The career of another brother, Benjamin, was less successful. After mysterious adventures in the USA in 1938, he was arrested and then shot as a "Trotskyite".


Like many other Bolsheviks, young Yasha did not abuse his studies at all. He graduated from only four classes of the gymnasium, then began to study pharmacy. But soon he retrained as a professional revolutionary - he became a well-known underground worker in Nizhny Novgorod. Then everything was the same as with his other colleagues: agitation, proclamations, expropriations, prisons, exiles, escapes ...

He “sat” successfully: in 1912, in Narym, Yakov Mikhailovich met Stalin. And then Turukhansk ended up with him. They even lived in the same house for a while. Here is how Stalin describes some of the details of their life together with Sverdlov in exile: “We mainly hunted by catching nelma. It didn't take much specialization. They also went hunting. I had a dog, I named her "Yashka". Of course, this was unpleasant for Sverdlov: he is Yashka, and the dog is Yashka ... ".

In general, the revolutionaries in tsarist exile did not know any special problems. They lived on government benefits, so they could not work. In addition, they were also fed from the party fund, which was made up of expropriations, that is, bank robberies, as well as contributions from capitalists who sympathized with them.

At the 7th (April) conference of the RSDLP, Sverdlov first personally met with V.I. Lenin and began to carry out his orders. Then he was elected a member of the Central Committee and headed the then created Secretariat of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, becoming the main organizer of the promotion and placement of personnel in key positions.

It was then that he received the nickname "Black Devil" - the color of the leather jacket, which he never took off in public, and which later became the Bolshevik fashion. However, he also had leather riding breeches, and even a cap. Outwardly, Sverdlov was a brunette with sharp features and a thick, powerful bass. “Nothing, Sverdlov will say it to them in a Sverdlovsk bass, and the matter will be settled,” Lenin usually said in difficult cases.
Unlike the eloquent Leon Trotsky, Sverdlov did not make pathetic speeches, did not travel around the fronts in luxurious royal carriages, did not give interviews to the foreign press, did not flash on the pages of newspapers. He always remained as if in the shadows.
His intelligent appearance with the same pince-nez and wedge-shaped beard suggested, rather, a university professor than a leader of the party of revolutionaries. Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote about Sverdlov as follows: “Of course, there was a lot of inner fire in him, but outwardly he was an absolutely icy person. When he was not on the podium, he always spoke in a quiet voice, walked quietly, all his gestures were slow. Sverdlov had a phenomenal memory, he was called "Lenin's notebook", he remembered everything and everyone.

When the Bolsheviks began to be hunted as German spies, Sverdlov personally came to Lenin and organized his transition to an underground position, hiding him near the Razliv station near Sestroretsk, while he himself remained in Petrograd to organize the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

However, Sverdlov was called the “Black Devil”, probably, not only for the black leather jacket. Historians give data on his involvement in black magic. So, in exile, Sverdlov acquired a dog, which he named Dog. The dog was endlessly attached to his master and never parted with him. At the end of 1916, the Dog died. Yakov Mikhailovich grieved terribly. He asked a local hunter to tear off the skin from the corpse of his faithful friend and dress it. And then he took it everywhere with him. In the Kremlin, this skin was always lying by Sverdlov's bed. This is a ritual of black magic. With such rituals, they try to “pull” the spirit of a deceased creature to the earth, not to allow him to go to another world in order to use it for his own purposes.

At the suggestion of Lenin, Sverdlov, as the chief personnel officer, was appointed chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. He carried out the main work on the creation of Soviet authorities in the center and in the field. “Sometimes it seemed that as V.I. Lenin came to Russia after the victory of the February Revolution with ready-made political blueprints for the entire revolution, so Ya.M. Sverdlov came from a distant exile with ready-made organizational drawings of all the work of the party and with a ready-made plan for the distribution of the main groups of workers by industry, ”Grigory Zinoviev later recalled.

It was Sverdlov who opened the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918, announcing the "Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People", in which Russia was proclaimed a republic. He was also chairman of the commission for drafting the Constitution of the RSFSR, which declared the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Things went to the fact that not Lenin, but Sverdlov began to be called the "red tsar." But still, until the complete "accession" of Sverdlov, the authority of Ilyich, who was much higher, interfered.

In this regard, the assassination attempt on Lenin on August 30, 1918 looks very mysterious. Researcher V.E. Shambarov directly points to Sverdlov's attempt to kill Lenin in order to completely seize power.

“If you look at who at that moment benefited from eliminating Lenin, then Sverdlov won the most,” he writes. - After the assassination attempt, Sverdlov was the first to arrive in the Kremlin. Sverdlov's wife reports that on the same evening he occupied Lenin's office, crushing under him the Council of People's Commissars, the Central Committee, and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Roy Medvedev writes the same thing: “When Lenin was seriously wounded by the Socialist-Revolutionary Kaplan, Sverdlov became the de facto head of the Soviet state for several weeks.”

It was Sverdlov who conducted a hasty investigation into the case of Fani Kaplan, it was on his orders that Kaplan was hastily shot and burned in a metal barrel on the territory of the Kremlin. Although she was a friend of Yakov Sverdlov's sister.

Through his relatives, Yakov Mikhailovich was connected with the foreign backstage. Researcher Pyotr Multatuli writes that even before the revolution, his brother Benjamin traveled to the United States, where he worked as a banker for some time. And there he entered into contacts with the Kuhn, Leib and K bank and the banker Jacob Schiff, who, as already established, financed the Bolsheviks, as well as the “transfer” of Trotsky and a group of his militants from the USA to Russia.

Sverdlov was famous for pathological cruelty. His desire to always go to extremes surprised even his party comrades. In the Urals, on the eve of the 1905 revolution, Sverdlov created an organization called the Combat Detachment of People's Armaments. It was an honor to be in the "brigade" of Sverdlov, but not everyone passed the test. So, one of the future killers of the royal family, Yermakov, "on the instructions of the party" in 1907 killed a police agent and cut off his head.

Sverdlov was the author of cruel directives prescribing fierce punitive measures in the suppression of Cossack uprisings against Soviet power on the Don. After the assassination attempt on Lenin, Sverdlov signed an appeal "on the transformation of the Soviet Republic into a single military camp", supplemented by the decree "On the Red Terror" issued by the Council of People's Commissars on September 5.

In May 1918, Sverdlov provoked the start of a fratricidal war in the countryside. In his report “On the Tasks of the Soviets in the Countryside,” he says: “Only if we can split the countryside into two irreconcilably hostile camps, if we can kindle there the same civil war that was going on not so long ago in the cities, if we we will be able to restore the rural poor against the rural bourgeoisie, only if we can say that we are doing in relation to the countryside what we were able to do for the cities. And in July 1918, he declared: “I want to dwell on the issue of the death penalty. I must point out that the Revolutionary Tribunal, in its first decision on the death penalty, showed, in my deep conviction, that it correctly takes into account the moment that we are experiencing at this time.

Regicide was an obsession for him. At the time of the massacre in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlov was in Moscow. Adventurer V.N. Orlov, who posed as a white counterintelligence officer, recalled: “In July 1918, when I was interviewing agents in the Cheka building, a messenger brought a telegram addressed to Dzerzhinsky, who was next to me. He quickly read it, turned as pale as death, jumped to his feet and, exclaiming "Again they act without consulting me!", He rushed out of the room. Dzerzhinsky hastened to the Kremlin. What in the name of all that's holy happened?

The next day we got the news. The imperial family was shot without the knowledge of the Cheka! Independently, at the direction of Sverdlov and one of the highest bosses in the Central Committee of the Communist Party!

According to the general opinion that prevailed in the Cheka, in the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Kremlin, the decision to kill was made and implemented by the government of Sverdlov. He carried out the preparations in secret from his comrades, and only after the execution he confronted them with a fait accompli.

The "Black Devil" died unexpectedly, at the age of only 34, although, as they said, he had good health. According to the official version, he allegedly fell ill with a Spanish flu. And so, on March 16, 1919, Sverdlov died and was buried with pomp near the Kremlin wall. “We lowered the proletarian leader into the grave, who did the most for the organization of the working class, for its victory,” Lenin said mournfully at the funeral.


Monument to Y. Sverdlov in Yekaterinburg
Doctor of Law Arkady Vaksberg wrote: “The exact cause of his death is unknown. At the same time, a rumor, apparently not without foundation, spread that in the city of Orel he was mortally beaten by workers, but this fact was supposedly hidden so as not to “disgrace the revolution” and “not to stir up even more anti-Semitic passions.”

The French communist writer Louis Aragon wrote: “Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, Lenin’s most faithful comrade, who became the first chairman of the Central Executive Committee, that is, the first head of the new Soviet state, and who, unfortunately for the whole world, had to die from a Spanish flu at thirty-four of the year. I said “unfortunately for the whole world”, because, of course, if he had survived, Sverdlov, and not Stalin, would have succeeded Lenin. Probably, Stalin understood this no worse than Aragon.

However, there could be another reason for the unexpected death of the Black Devil, a very banal one - money. The fact is that Sverdlov was the keeper of a kind of "Bolshevik obshchak". This was done by his second wife - Claudia Timofeevna, nee Novgorodtseva. The "Diamond Fund of the Politburo" was hidden in her apartment. Part of this "common fund" was probably later discovered in a safe in Sverdlov's office.

... They say that when a person dies, all his vices or virtues are imprinted on his face. As usual, the death mask was removed from the "fiery revolutionary". Seeing her, psychiatrist Yevgeny Chernosvitov exclaimed: "The Sverdlov mask is the embodiment of evil, it is unpleasant to look at it!"

Vladimir Malyshev. "Safe of Yakov Sverdlov"