Literary and historical notes of a young technician

SVERDLOV YAKOV MIKHAILOVICH Real name - Movshovich Yankel (born in 1885 - died in 1919) One of the leaders of the Bolshevik party and organizers of the October Revolution, head of the Soviet “parliament” - the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets in 1917–1919, inspirer “ red terror." Yakov

Sverdlov Yakov Mikhailovich 1885–1919 Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (head of the first Soviet state) Born on June 3, 1885 in Nizhny Novgorod into a Jewish family. Father - Mikhail Izrailevich Sverdlov - was an engraver; mother - Elizaveta Solomonovna - was a housewife. The Sverdlovs lived on Bolshaya

...“The Black Devil of the Bolsheviks” by Y.M. Sverdlov can safely be considered the initiator of inciting the civil war.

http://www.ptiburdukov.rf/%D0%A1%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA /%D0%91%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%B8/%D0%A1%D0%B2%D0%B5 %D1%80%D0%B4%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%AF%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%9C%D0%B8%D1%85%D0 %B0%D0%B9%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87

Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov

In the second half of the 1980s, at the very dawn of the so-called “perestroika,” sensational revelations of the activities of many revolutionary leaders began to leak into the press. The mass destruction of monuments of the Soviet era and the onset of the time of “reverse renaming” were being prepared. Ya.M. did not escape these perestroika revelations either. Sverdlov.

Complaining about the almost complete lack of sources about his pre-revolutionary party life, journalists broke their spears in disputes: did the fiery orator Sverdlov belong to the Bolsheviks before 1917? Or was he a Menshevik who “adhered” to Lenin’s party, or even a Socialist-Revolutionary, no worse than those who sat in the last composition of the Provisional Government?

Today, the question of Sverdlov’s party affiliation, like many other issues of ideological differences in Russian Social Democracy, is not so relevant. Before the court of history, one thing is clear: Ya.M. Sverdlov, like all his comrades-in-arms, are guilty of inciting the “fire of the world revolution,” which ultimately led to chaos, anarchy, the destruction of Russian statehood, the expulsion and death of millions of Russian people.

The names of Lenin, Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky, Trotsky and other bloody executioners, indeed, have no place on the map of our homeland. On the other hand, they are individuals who not only entered the history of Russia, but also completely turned this history around, bringing to life the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

Ya.M. Sverdlov is a figure significantly mythologized by Soviet historiography, debunked and overthrown in the era of “perestroika,” and completely forgotten by modern researchers.

Sources that shed light on it real activity, in fact, not enough. In this article we will try to at least recreate the main stages of his biography, without stooping to Soviet myth-making and “perestroika” defamation.

Childhood and family

Yakov Mikhailovich (Movshovich) Sverdlov was born on May 22 (June 3, new style) 1885 in Nizhny Novgorod, on Pokrovka (later Sverdlov Street). Father Miraim Izrailevich (according to other sources, Movsha, because documents often mention Y. Sverdlov’s patronymic - Movshovich) was not an “artisan engraver,” as reported in the article about Sverdlov in the TSB, but the owner of an engraving workshop. For some reason, Yakov himself does not indicate his father’s real name anywhere.

Real name of Yakov Sverdlov

In the domestic media and on the pages of Internet resources, very emotional discussions about the personality of Ya. Sverdlov, his role in the events of 1917-1918, and the execution of the royal family continue to persist. The true circumstances of his early, unexpected death raise many questions. Judging by the number of search queries, today almost half of the population of the entire post-Soviet space is trying to find out the real name of this colorful character.

Obviously because the man who went down in history under the name Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov had very little of the present.

However, if we put aside most of the anti-Semitic insinuations and idle speculation that appear in modern publications about Sverdlov and turn directly to known archival documents, the surname Sverdlov (Sverdlin) should be recognized as real.

In 1882, Ya.M. Sverdlov’s father registered with the city government of Nizhny Novgorod as an artisan Movsha Izrailevich Sverdlin.

Where and when the family of the future revolutionary came to Nizhny Novgorod is unknown. Under what surname it existed until 1882 - too. Some sources indicate that Movsha Izrailevich arrived in the late 1870s “from Lithuania.” Investigator N.A. Sokolov, who conducted the investigation into the murder of Nicholas II and his family, called Yakov Sverdlov “a tradesman of the city of Polotsk, Vitebsk province,” immediately pointing out that he was born in Nizhny Novgorod.

Yakov Sverdlov was indeed born in Nizhny Novgorod. In the Nizhny Novgorod book of records of the birth of Jewish children for 1885, he was recorded on May 23 (not 22) under the name Yakov-Aaron. All his brothers and sisters, also born in Nizhny Novgorod, bore the surname Sverdlovs (Sverdlins).

In modern publications, a version has appeared more than once that the engraver Movsha Sverdlin in his former life “beyond the Pale of Settlement” supposedly existed under the surname Gauchmann, and signed up as Sverdlin “for conspiracy”, because began to collaborate with the revolutionary underground. Widow of Ya.M.Sverdlov - K.T. Novgorodtseva in her memoirs directly indicates that Movsha Izrailevich produced stamps and seals for false passports and had a wide clientele among revolutionaries, as well as criminals. But for many years, Sverdlin’s engraving workshop operated quite legally, and its owner did not need “conspiracy” at all.

The version about the surname Gauchmann is currently not confirmed by any documentary sources.

And the reference to the British journalist Robert Wilton, who was very superficially familiar with the materials of the case of the murder of the royal family, looks completely funny. The Briton simply confused Kamenev and Sverdlov, calling the main organizer of the crime a certain Yakov Moishevich Rosenfeld, who never existed in the world. In the same way, English journalists “invented” General Kharkov in 1919, and King George V, without understanding it, made him, along with Denikin and Kolchak, an honorary member of the Order of Michael and George. The award for this mythical character had to be received by the commander of the Volunteer Army V.Z. Mai-Maevsky. And after his death, Sverdlov had to appear in the Western press as Rosenfeld.

Wikipedia has launched a very extensive discussion on finding out the real name of Sverdlov. Unfortunately, none of its participants has genuine documentary data, so the question remains open to this day.

Yakov had brothers (Zinovy, Benjamin, Lev) and two sisters (Sarah and Sophia) from his father’s first marriage. From his father's second marriage - brothers Alexander and German. Almost nothing is known about Sverdlov’s mother, except that her name was Elizaveta Solomonovna and that she was a housewife. My paternal grandfather is a Saratov merchant. Sister Sophia was also married to a jeweler - the owner of an engraving workshop, Averbakh. One of Sverdlov's brothers emigrated to the USA and became a banker there.

According to the recollections of sisters Sarah, Sophia and brother Benjamin, “in childhood, Yakov was playful beyond his years, he seemed older than his years. If he made promises, he always kept them. If he set any goal for himself, he achieved it, no matter how much work it cost him.”

The interrogation protocol of Sverdlov (dated January 12, 1910) provides the following details of his biography: in the column “religion” - “Jewish”, in the column “origin and nationality” - “from the philistines, Jew”, in the column “education” - “in In 1900, he graduated from the 4th grade, 15 years old” in the column “whether he was previously involved in inquiries, how, and how they ended” - “he was involved in 1902 and 1903 in Nizhny Novgorod for belonging to a secret society; the investigations were stopped..."

Revolutionary

It is generally accepted that Sverdlov’s revolutionary biography began in Nizhny Novgorod, when Yakov was barely 16 years old. Some contemporary publications contained information that Sverdlov’s father, an artisan engraver, made and sold counterfeit stamps that were used by political and criminal criminals to forge documents. It is possible that Yakov, while still a teenager, acted as a mediator in these transactions, and therefore he so easily and quickly entered the revolutionary environment, becoming “one of his own” even among criminals in Siberian exile.

According to documents, for the first time Yakov Sverdlov was arrested (detained) by the police for two days on December 3, 1901 for participating in a demonstration during the send-off of A. M. Gorky into exile.

On May 5, 1902, he was arrested for fourteen days for participating in a demonstration at the funeral of student B.I. Rurikov.

On April 14, 1903, Sverdlov was arrested at his apartment. During the search, leaflets of the Nizhny Novgorod Committee of the RSDLP were taken. On August 11, he was released from arrest. On November 12, he was subject to public police supervision for two years at the place of residence of his parents.

On November 24, 1903, he again participated in the funeral of student A.V. Yarovitsky. December 7 - at the funeral of A.V. Panov, who was under police supervision in Nizhny Novgorod. On March 21, 1905, he took part in the funeral of high school student Panov, who shot himself in Yaroslavl. On April 3, again in Nizhny Novgorod, he takes part in the funeral of N.I. Devyatkov, who shot himself. On June 17, 1905, he speaks at a meeting of clerks in the premises of the All-Estate Club in Nizhny Novgorod with an appeal to get the owners to satisfy their demands “by force and weapons.”

The picture turns out strange. Sverdlov either sees off or buries some suicides, or gives speeches to clerks... Actually, other than storing leaflets, no “revolutionary” activity known to the police can be attributed to him.

His “revolutionary work” in Kostroma, Kazan, Yaroslavl, Perm, Yekaterinburg and other cities, which is written about in the TSB, raises even more bewilderments and questions.

From the memoirs of his wife Claudia Timofeevna Novgorodtseva, it is known that on September 28, 1905, Sverdlov came to Yekaterinburg for a purpose unknown to her, where they met. Claudia Timofeevna is the daughter of an Ekaterinburg merchant (one of the streets in the former Sverdlovsk is named after her). She was eight years older than Sverdlov and was considered his wife, although no official marriage was registered between them.

Further, in the documents of the gendarme department and Sverdlov’s case, it is said that on June 10, 1906, “after the defeat of the military organization,” he was arrested on the street in Perm with a passport in the name of L. S. Hertz. On September 22 - 23, 1907, he was sentenced to two years by the verdict of the Kazan Court Chamber. Who did this consist of? combat organization- not reported in the report of the Perm gendarme department to St. Petersburg. The Bolsheviks, as is known, did not have military organizations. Mindful of the fate of his elder brother, Lenin fundamentally led the party along a “different path.” It turns out that in the revolution of 1905 Sverdlov acted hand in hand with some extremists, like the Socialist Revolutionaries?

After serving exactly two years (Sverdlov’s only prison sentence), he left for Moscow. The TSB reports that on December 13, 1909, Sverdlov was again arrested directly at a meeting of the executive commission of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP under the name of I. I. Smirnov. But the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP was defeated back in 1905 (four months after its formation), and its first secretary Zemlyachka (nee Zalkind Rozalia Samoilovna) was arrested. Her replacement, V.M. Likhachev was arrested in December 1908. The Moscow Bolshevik organization itself dates back only to March 1917 (see: Moscow city ​​organization CPSU, 1917 - 1988 Moscow worker, 1989.) Another myth-making?

In the article about Sverdlov, published in the encyclopedia “Great October Socialist revolution"(Soviet Encyclopedia publishing house, 1977), nothing was reported about the arrest at a meeting of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP.

On March 1, 1910, by decree of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Sverdlov was sentenced to deportation for three years to the Narym region for revolutionary agitation. On March 17, Sverdlov submits a petition to the police department to replace the deportation to Siberia with travel abroad. They refuse him. On March 31, 1910, he was sent from Moscow by convoy to the Tomsk province. In exile, Sverdlov met Philip (party nickname) Isaich Goloshchekin (aka Shaya Isaakovich Goloshchekin) and other revolutionaries, whom he later, as chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, provided patronage.

According to the memoirs of V.M. Kosarev, written 30 years after Sverdlov’s death, “as soon as Yakov Mikhailovich arrived in Narym, he immediately began giving lectures on political economy.” The question arises: where did he study it with four classes of education? Already on July 27, Sverdlov escapes from exile. In September 1910, he appears in St. Petersburg, and on November 10 he writes a leaflet in connection with the death of Tolstoy, signed “Group of Social Democrats.”

On November 14, 1910, Sverdlov was arrested in St. Petersburg as an “agent of the Bolshevik Central Committee” (from the Red Archive magazine). When did Sverdlov join the Bolsheviks? The documents are silent about this.

The 50th volume of the TSB (1st edition) says this: “Sverdlov...since 1901 he took part in the Social Democratic movement.” That's all.

In his speech dedicated to the memory of Sverdlov in 1919, V.I. Lenin also found it difficult to name the exact date of such a prominent Bolshevik joining the party: “In the first period of his activity, still quite a youth, he, barely imbued with political consciousness, immediately and completely surrendered to the revolution” (Speech in memory of Ya. M. Sverdlov at an emergency meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee 18 March 1919 //About Yakov Sverdlov. Politizdat, 1985). Not a word is said about Sverdlov’s membership in the Bolshevik Party since 1901 in his obituary (see: Pravda. 1919, March 18).

Neither his brother German Sverdlov nor K. T. Novgorodtseva address this issue in their memoirs about her husband. (See: About Yakov Sverdlov. pp. 181 - 221)

However, sisters Sophia, Sarah and brother Benjamin, many years after the death of their brother, recalled that “by the age of fifteen he had already become a revolutionary, and at sixteen he joined the party.” In what time, if Bolshevism, as a current of political thought (according to the famous expression of V.I. Lenin) arose at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, held in London in 1903?..

On April 30, 1911, by resolution of the Special Meeting of Ya.M. Sverdlov is again sent to the Narym region, this time for four years. On December 7, 1912 he escapes. On February 10, 1913, he was arrested at the apartment of G.I. Petrovsky in St. Petersburg. On April 4, by resolution of the Special Meeting, he was sentenced to deportation for five years to the Turukhansk region.

Here Sverdlov was very familiar with I.V. Stalin. At one time they even lived in the same house, but then they quarreled on purely domestic grounds. According to the memoirs of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, Stalin once told him that the “clean” Sverdlov washed his dishes after every meal, while the future father of nations simply put the plate on the floor, where his hunting dog licked it clean. In retaliation for Sverdlov’s “sour face”, Stalin took and named the dog Yashka. Sverdlov was mortally offended.

In March 1917, former neighbors Sverdlov and Stalin also returned separately from exile in Turukhansk. On March 21, Sverdlov stopped in Krasnoyarsk, where “he spoke at party and Soviet meetings, exposing the Menshevik-SR compromisers” (from the book “Selected Articles and Speeches of Sverdlov,” 1944).

For very short term(from the moment of leaving Krasnoyarsk on March 23, arriving in St. Petersburg, and from there to Yekaterinburg) Sverdlov suddenly became “the favorite of the Ural workers,” who on April 15, 1917, at the Ural Party Conference, “elected Sverdlov as a delegate to the All-Russian April Conference.” It is still unknown what faction he represented at the April Conference? Bolsheviks, Mensheviks or Bundists?

Sverdlov and Lenin

It is also unknown where and when Lenin met Sverdlov. There are two versions: either at the April Conference of 1917, or in October, immediately before the uprising.

According to the official version of the TSB, after the April Conference, little-known Sverdlov was unexpectedly elected head of the Organizational Bureau for convening the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b). After the congress, he “headed the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), was the main speaker at Bolshevik rallies and received the nickname “black devil of the Bolsheviks” from political opponents (based on the color of his leather jacket, which he never parted with, then it became a Bolshevik fashion - E. Sh.), participated in the leadership of the Military Organization under the Central Committee, established connections with local party organizations, maintaining constant contact with V.I. Lenin, who was underground.”

If about the black jacket it’s pure truth, then about the constant connection with Lenin it’s an absolute hoax.

The name of Sverdlov was first mentioned in the 34th volume of the Complete Works of V.I. Lenin (July - October 1917), on page 434, which contains Lenin’s first (and only) short letter-note to Sverdlov, written on October 23, 1917 (that is, literally two days before the coup). This note contains no indication of Lenin’s earlier acquaintance with his addressee:

Comrade Sverdlov.

Only last night I learned that Zinoviev denies in writing his participation in Kamenev’s speech in Novaya Zhizn. How come you don’t send me anything??? I sent all the letters about Kamenev and Zinoviev only to members of the Central Committee. You know that; Isn’t it strange after this that you definitely doubt it? In the case of Zinoviev and Kamenev, if you... demand a compromise, make a proposal against me to submit the case to the party court... this will be a delay. "Kamenev's resignation accepted"? From the Central Committee? Send the text of his statement.

V.I. Lenin’s note was ignored by Sverdlov, as well as by other members of the Central Committee formed at the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b).

Sverdlov was the chairman at the meetings of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) on October 10 (23) and 16 (29), 1917, which decided on an armed uprising; elected a member of the Military Revolutionary Center for the leadership of the uprising. Delegate to the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets, head of the Bolshevik faction of the congress.

In power

Few people know that on October 27 (November 9), 1917, on the second day after the coup, at the first meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, L. V. Kamenev (Rosenfeld) was elected Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. But due to the disorganization policy and insubordination of the Central Committee, Kamenev was removed from the post of Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee eleven days later. On November 8 (21), 1917, he was replaced in this post by Sverdlov. It was V.I. Lenin who nominated him. As N.K. Krupskaya recalled, “the choice was extremely successful.”

How successful is indicated by the events that took place during Sverdlov’s stay in power (a year and four months).

In his speech at the opening of the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918 (which everyone was waiting for), Sverdlov emphasized the merciless suppression of exploiters, the establishment of a socialist organization of society and the victories of socialism in all countries. Here, “in the interests of ensuring full power... the armament of the working people is decreed.” Sverdlov ended his speech with strange, far-reaching words: “Let us hope that the foundations of the new society specified in this declaration will remain unshakable and, having established themselves in Russia, will gradually cover the whole world.”

When Sverdlov said that the Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies had instructed him to open the meeting of the Constituent Assembly, voices were heard in the hall from the right and center: “You have blood on your hands, enough blood...”

The Constituent Assembly lasted 12 hours and 40 minutes. The Bolsheviks gained only 25 percent of the votes, and the elections were declared invalid and counter-revolutionary.

“The Black Devil of the Bolsheviks” by Y.M. Sverdlov can safely be considered the initiator of inciting the civil war.

In his well-known speech at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on May 20, 1918, Sverdlov openly said that “if in the cities we have already managed to practically kill our big bourgeoisie, then we cannot yet say the same about the countryside. Only if we can split the village into two irreconcilable hostile camps, if we can kindle there the same civil war that not so long ago was going on in the cities, if we succeed in restoring the rural poor against the rural bourgeoisie - only if we We will be able to say that we will do for the village what we were able to do for the city.”

He said this at a time when the Civil War in Russia had already actually begun, but had not yet completely covered the entire territory of the country. The peasantry was still a homogeneous, inert mass, which was just waiting to be “pushed” into a split from the right or the left. Through surplus appropriation, robbery and violence, the Bolsheviks very soon achieved the desired result.

Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Sverdlov has direct relation and to the murder of the royal family.

On May 9, 1918, at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Sverdlov announced that seven family members and four servants had been transported from the Tobolsk provincial house to Ipatiev’s house in Yekaterinburg. On July 12, 1918, member of the Ural Council F.I. Goloshchekin (an old acquaintance of Sverdlov, to whom he provided all kinds of patronage) returned from Moscow to Yekaterinburg. Subsequently, the Bolsheviks justified the destruction of the Romanovs by the threat of the capture of Yekaterinburg by the Whites (allegedly they did not have time to take them out, they were afraid that the Tsar would be released, etc.)

However, today it is reliably known that direct instructions for the destruction of the family were given by Sverdlov.
In the building of the Volga-Kama Bank in Yekaterinburg, the Ural Council met (chaired by A.G. Beloborodov), at which the fate of the tsar, his wife, five minor children and four more from the servants was decided. The order of the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Sverdlov was carried out: everyone was sentenced to death. On July 18, Sverdlov received a message about the execution of the sentence.

In the evening, the Council of People's Commissars chaired by V.I. Lenin meets in the Kremlin. The floor is given to Sverdlov: “I must state the following. A message was received from Yekaterinburg that, by order of the Ural Regional Council, a person had been shot there. former king Nikolai Romanov... The Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, which met today, decided: the decision and actions of the Ural Council were recognized as correct.”

In fact, everything was decided single-handedly by Sverdlov in a narrow circle of close associates (three or four people). He conveyed this decision with Goloshchekin to Yekaterinburg not in writing, but in words.

Sverdlov is also one of the initiators, ideologists and implementers of the “Red Terror” policy. After the assassination attempt on Lenin on August 30, 1918, Sverdlov signed the appeal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on September 2 “on the transformation of the Soviet republic into a single military camp,” supplemented on September 5 by the “Resolution on Red Terror” issued by the Council of People’s Commissars, which declared mass red terror against all enemies of the revolution.

On January 24, 1919, Sverdlov single-handedly signed a directive from the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), ordering the implementation of harsh punitive measures in suppressing Cossack uprisings against Soviet power on the Don.

Here are some excerpts from this ominous directive:

“The Central Committee decides to carry out mass terror against the White Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; carry out merciless mass terror against all Cossacks who took any direct or indirect part in the fight against Soviet power... Confiscate bread and force all surpluses to be poured into specified points, this applies to both bread and all other agricultural products. .. All commissioners appointed to certain Cossack settlements are invited to show maximum firmness and steadily implement these instructions.”

In fact, the Central Committee did not decide anything. The Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on March 16, 1919 (the day of Sverdlov’s death) canceled the January directive. But it was already too late - the infernal machine was set in motion. And how can it be stopped if the directive came from the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee himself, who was not elected by the people?

Having reached power, upstarts like Sverdlov spared neither the elderly, nor women, nor children. When the extermination of the Cossacks was already in full swing and they, defending themselves from unheard-of terror, rebelled against Soviet power, on the day of Sverdlov’s funeral the VIII Congress of the RCP (b) opened. V.I. Lenin, speaking with a political and organizational report, noted the role of Sverdlov as follows:

“I am not able to replace him even by a hundredth part, because in this work (organizing the work of the Central Committee - E.Sh.) we were forced to rely entirely and had every reason to rely on Comrade. Sverdlov, who often made decisions single-handedly.”

Speaking in the debate, a delegate from the Moscow provincial organization of the RCP (b) N. Osinsky said:

“We need to pose the question directly. We did not have a collegial, but an individual solution to issues. The organizational work of the Central Committee was reduced to the activities of one comrade - Sverdlov.
All the threads were held by one person. This was an abnormal situation. The same must be said about the political work of the Central Committee. During this period between congresses, we did not have a friendly collegial discussion and decision.
We must state this. The Central Committee, as a collegium, actually did not exist... It was considered a great personal merit to Comrade Sverdlov that he could embrace the immensity within himself, but for the party this is far from a compliment...”

In many speeches at the congress, it was noted with bitterness that “we are increasingly developing patronage of close people, protectionism, and at the same time, abuses, bribery, and obvious outrages are being committed by party workers.” And the delegate of the congress from the Military Food Bureau, M. M. Kostelovskaya, criticizing the policy of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in the village, directly said: “This method of work (of Sverdlov) proved that in this way we not only do not introduce class stratification, civil war into the village, but, on the contrary, restore “All strata of the peasantry - large, medium and small - are against us, we are driving a wedge between the city and the countryside, that is, in the wrong place where it is required.”

The final

How did the life of this “fiery revolutionary” end? And here are the questions. On March 6, 1919, Sverdlov spoke in Kharkov with short speech at the III All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets of Workers', Peasants' and Red Army Deputies. On the same day, he sent telegrams to Serpukhov, Tula, Kursk, Belgorod and Orel, in which he considered it advisable to see his comrades (apparently, the leaders of local party bodies). On the same day, at 21:00, he left Kharkov.

The train to Orel arrived on March 7, at 10 am. Sverdlov, judging by the last telegram, did not intend to get out of his carriage, but he still had to get out: at that time there was a strike of railway workers at the station. According to the memoirs of P. S. Vinogradskaya, published 53 years after Sverdlov’s death, “Yakov Mikhailovich had to hold a rally. This happened in Orel. As the train approached the platform, a meeting of railway workers took place near the station. Comrade B.M. Volin (aka Fradkin), who was then the chairman of the Oryol provincial executive committee, came to Sverdlov to ask him to speak at the rally... A delegation came on behalf of the workers and stated that the railway workers only wanted to listen to Sverdlov... He was enthusiastic met by the workers, shared with them his joyful thoughts about the creation of III Communist International. Yakov Mikhailovich returned completely hoarse...”

It seemed to Vinogradskaya that Sverdlov “caught a cold.” Is it so? What actually happened during his meeting with the workers? How can one explain that the train with Sverdlov arrived in Moscow only on March 11? Because the railway workers, having enjoyed the speech about the Third International, peacefully continued the strike on the rails? And it’s unlikely that the striking (and therefore seriously dissatisfied) workers in 1919 would have been delighted by a leather commissar chatting about the world revolution...

The white press of the South of Russia, and behind it the emigrant press, actively disseminated the version that the “black devil of the Bolsheviks” Sverdlov was beaten by peasants at a rally in Orel, from which he subsequently died. This message is most likely a typical newspaper “duck”, propaganda of the white OSVAG. Convinced opponents of Soviet power really wanted to believe that the people again began to “save Russia” by beating the Jews...

There is no doubt that Sverdlov most likely had some kind of inflammatory process before his death. But he was not going to die, since according to some sources he spoke at one of the meetings a day before his death. And according to the medical report, a serious deterioration in health occurred on March 14. The fateful VIII Congress of the RSDLP (b) was scheduled for March 18, 1919, at which a fierce struggle was to flare up.
Lenin, after being wounded, was no longer so energetic.
The white armies inflicted one defeat after another on the red ones. There could be a question about personnel changes both in the government and law enforcement agencies. In the event of Lenin’s removal, the entire power of not only the executive, but also state power. And a day and a half before the start of the congress, on May 16, at 16.45, Sverdlov unexpectedly dies, although before that he was in good health.

The version that Sverdlov caught the Spanish flu on his trip to Kharkov is also not without foundation. This disease could bring a young, completely healthy person to the grave in a few days. If we take into account some of the speeches we cited earlier at the congress (after the death of the all-powerful chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee), then we can assume that opposition to his methods of work in the party still existed.
Sverdlov's death itself smoothed over these growing contradictions. The version of poisoning was not seriously considered by anyone, but it is also possible that yesterday’s comrades tactfully “helped” such an odious figure leave the political arena.

“The Black Devil,” as he was nicknamed, 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, a letter from Genrikh Yagoda to I.V. was discovered in the former archives of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. To Stalin, July 27, 1935. In it, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs reported: Ya.M.'s personal safe was discovered in the warehouse of the Kremlin commandant. Sverdlov, which has not been opened for 16 years since his death, and the key to which was lost. There were gold coins of tsarist minting worth an astronomical amount, over seven hundred gold items with precious stones, many blank passport forms and completed passports in the name of Sverdlov himself and unknown persons, bonds of tsarist times.

Why and for what purpose the “fiery revolutionary” kept all this in his 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 Gauchmann, with his wife Elizaveta Solomonovna, moved from the Pale of Settlement into the interior of Russia and settled in Nizhny Novgorod, where he signed up as an artisan under the name Movsha Sverdlin, later turning into Sverdlova. Not everything is clear with the name. According to 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, they called him 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 stop Zinovy ​​from emigrating, ending up in France, then joining 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 United States in 1938, he was arrested and then shot as a “Trotskyist.”

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 he soon 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, exile, escapes...

He “sat” successfully: in 1912, in Narym, Yakov Mikhailovich met Stalin. And then Turukhansk ended up with him. For some time they even lived in the same house. Here is how Stalin describes some details of their life together with Sverdlov in exile: “We mainly lived by catching nelma. This did not require much specialization. We also went hunting. I had a dog, I named it “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 have any special problems. We lived on benefits from the government, so we didn’t have to work. In addition, they were also fed from the party treasury, which consisted of expropriations, that is, bank robberies, as well as from contributions from capitalists who sympathized with them.

At the 7th (April) conference of the RSDLP, Sverdlov personally met with V.I. for the first time. Lenin and began to carry out his instructions. 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 work on the promotion and placement of personnel in key positions.

It was then that he received the nickname “Black Devil” - after the color of his leather jacket, which he never took off in public, and which later became Bolshevik fashion. However, he also had leather riding breeches and even a cap. Outwardly, Sverdlov was a dark-haired man with sharp features and a thick, powerful bass voice. “It’s okay, Sverdlov will tell them this in a Sverdlovsk bass voice, and the matter will be settled,” Lenin usually said in difficult cases.

Unlike the eloquent Leon Trotsky, Sverdlov did not make pretentious speeches, did not tour the fronts in luxurious royal carriages, did not give interviews to the foreign press, and did not appear on the pages of newspapers. He remained, as it were, in the shadows all the time.
His intelligent appearance with his unchanging pince-nez and wedge beard suggested, rather, a university professor than the leader of the revolutionary party. Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote about Sverdlov like this: “Of course, there was a lot of internal fire in him, but outwardly he was an absolutely icy man. When he was not on the podium, he always spoke in a low voice, walked quietly, and 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 probably called the “Black Devil” not only for his black leather jacket. Historians provide evidence of his involvement in black magic. So, in exile, Sverdlov acquired a dog, which he named Pes. The dog was endlessly attached to his owner and never parted with him. At the end of 1916, the Dog died. Yakov Mikhailovich grieved terribly. He asked a local hunter to skin the corpse of his faithful friend and tan it. And then he took her with him everywhere. In the Kremlin, this skin always lay by Sverdlov’s bed. We are talking about a black magic ritual. With such rituals, they try to “pull” the spirit of a deceased creature to the earth, not to allow it to go into another world in order to use it for their 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 locally. “Sometimes it seemed that like 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 distant exile with ready-made organizational drawings of the entire work of the party and with a ready-made plan for the distribution of the main groups of workers by branches of work,” 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 the chairman of the commission for the development of the Constitution of the RSFSR, which declared the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Things were getting to the point where it was no longer Lenin, but Sverdlov who began to be called the “Red Tsar.” But still, until his complete “reign”, Sverdlov was hampered by the authority of Ilyich, who was much higher.

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 benefited from eliminating Lenin at that moment, Sverdlov won the most,” he writes. - After the assassination attempt, Sverdlov was the first to arrive in the Kremlin. Sverdlov’s wife reports that that same evening he occupied Lenin’s office, taking over 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 carried out 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 Peter Multatuli writes that his brother Benjamin traveled to the USA even before the revolution, where he worked as a banker for some time. And there he came into contact with the bank Kuhn, Leib and Co. and the banker Jacob Schiff, who, as has already been established, financed the Bolsheviks, as well as the “transfer” of Trotsky and a group of his militants to Russia from the United States.

Sverdlov was famous for his 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 Arms.” It was an honor to be in Sverdlov’s “brigade,” but not everyone passed the test. Thus, one of the future killers of the royal family, Ermakov, “on instructions from the party” in 1907 killed a police agent and cut off his head.

Sverdlov was the author of cruel directives that prescribed fierce punitive measures in suppressing 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 resolution “On 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 village. In his report “On the tasks of the Soviets in the countryside,” he says: “Only if we can split the village 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 It will be possible to restore the rural poor against the rural bourgeoisie, only then will we be able to say that we are doing for the countryside what we were able to do for the cities.” And in July 1918 he said: “I want to dwell on the question of the death penalty. I must point out that the Revolutionary Tribunal, with its first decision on the death penalty, showed, in my deep conviction, that it correctly took into account the given 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, posing as a white counterintelligence agent, 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 are acting without consulting me!”, rushed out of the room. Dzerzhinsky hurried to the Kremlin. What on earth happened?

The next day we found out. The imperial family was shot without the knowledge of the Cheka! Independently, on the instructions of Sverdlov and one of the highest bosses in the Central Committee of the Communist Party!
According to the general opinion in the Cheka, the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Kremlin, the decision to kill was made and implemented by Sverdlov’s authorities. He carried out the preparations in secret from his comrades, and only after the execution 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 the Spanish flu. And so, on March 16, 1919, Sverdlov died and was buried with pomp at the Kremlin wall. “We lowered into the grave the proletarian leader who did most to organize 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, an apparently not unfounded rumor spread that in the city of Oryol he had been fatally beaten by workers, but this fact was allegedly hidden so as “not to disgrace the revolution” and “not to inflame 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, was to die of the Spanish flu at thirty-four of the year. I said “to the misfortune of the whole world,” because, of course, if he had survived, Sverdlov, and not Stalin, would have succeeded Lenin.” Stalin probably 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 custodian of a kind of “Bolshevik common fund”. This was done by his second wife, Claudia Timofeevna, née Novgorodtseva. The Politburo Diamond Fund was hidden in her apartment. Part of this “common fund” was probably later discovered in the 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 Evgeny Chernosvitov exclaimed: “Sverdlov’s mask is the embodiment of evil, it’s unpleasant to look at!”

Yakov Sverdlov and his brothers...

Sverdlov’s personality can rightfully be classified as a genius infernal personality, if such a term can be applied to supporters of the underworld. Having lived a very short life, at the time of his death he was not 34 years old, Yakov Sverdlov managed to contribute so much to the victory of the world revolution, to set a pace of mass bloodletting that few world villains can compete with. The crimes of Sverdlov and his clique can only be compared with the crimes of the Nazis during World War II. Leon Trotsky loved him very much, and he was flattered when he was called the “demon of the revolution.”

But it must be said that in comparison with Sverdlov, the phrase-monger and demagogue Trotsky was clearly a loser. It was not he who rightfully earned the name “demon of the revolution”, but Sverdlov. Unlike Vladimir Lenin and Trotsky, Sverdlov did not make hysterical and pretentious speeches, did not travel around the front in former tsarist carriages, did not give interviews to the foreign press and almost did not appear on the pages of newspapers and magazines. He, occupying the highest position in the Soviet state, remained as if in the shadows all the time, preferring to lead from behind the curtain. His speech, always calm and reasonable, his intelligent appearance with his constant pince-nez and wedge beard, his almond-shaped, always slightly sad eyes, rather suggested a zemstvo doctor than the leader of one of the bloodiest regimes in world history. Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote about Sverdlov: “Of course, there was a lot of internal fire in him, but outwardly he was an absolutely icy man. When he was not on the podium, he always spoke in a low voice, walked quietly, and all his gestures were slow.”

But those who knew Sverdlov closely knew how deceptive this appearance of an intelligent doctor was. Such a powerful force was felt in Sverdlov, such an iron conviction in the work he was doing, that involuntarily he was recognized as the unofficial leader of the entire party. Sverdlov’s quiet voice inspired horror many times greater than Lenin’s heart-rending screams. It was this man who gave the order to kill the royal family, it was he who unleashed the monstrous Red Terror, it was he who initiated the so-called “decossackization”, when about 1 million Don Cossacks, including women and infants, were brutally killed, including buried alive. Until March 1919, there was not a single bloody global action of the Bolsheviks that was not initiated by Sverdlov. No wonder he was called “the brain of the party.” “We have no doubt,” wrote Pavel Paganutsi, “that the monstrous crimes of the Bolsheviks (in 1918 - Author), which surpassed all measures of cruelty, were committed on orders from the center, Moscow, and the main responsibility for them lay with Sverdlov.” ..

Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov was born on May 22, 1885 in Nizhny Novgorod into the family of the owner of an engraving workshop. Yiddish it full name sounded like Yankel Movshevich Sverdlov. Mikhail Parkhomovsky writes that Sverdlov’s great-grandfather, a tradesman from the city of Polotsk, was a skilled driller. “Apparently,” says Parkhomovsky, “the surname came from the Belarusian word “sverdlo.”

In childhood, nothing foreshadowed the boy’s bloody character...

For his assistance to the revolutionaries, Movsha Sverdlov was under the supervision of the Nizhny Novgorod gendarmerie department.

Yakov's elder brother, Zavel Movshovich Sverdlov, bore the name of Zinovy ​​Alekseevich Peshkov. Zinovy ​​Sverdlov (Peshkov) was a very difficult figure. Here are the data from the French directory “Who's who in France” for 1955-1956: “Zinovy ​​Peshkov, diplomat and general. Born on October 16, 1884 in Nizhny Novgorod (Russia). Volunteer in the French army (1914). Participated in missions: to the USA - 1917, China, Japan, Manchuria and Siberia - 1918-1920.”

Peshkov joined the revolutionary movement from his youth, but quickly moved away from it. However, in this act Zinovy ​​was guided not by ideological considerations, but by some much more subtle reasons. Belonging to secret societies and close connections with Gorky allowed Zinovy ​​Peshkov to maintain connections with the most influential people in the revolutionary and Masonic camp. In 1906, Zinovy, together with Gorky, made a long trip to the USA, where they raised money to support the revolution. It is curious that Zinovy ​​was on friendly terms with the widow and daughters of the great Russian doctor Sergei Botkin, the father of Evgeniy Botkin, the physician of Emperor Nicholas II.

In 1911, Zinovy ​​Sverdlov again left for the USA, where he certainly maintained close ties with his brother Veniamin, and almost certainly with Jacob Schiff. It is interesting that after Zinovy ​​was seriously wounded at the front during the World War, “his many friends and patrons in the French “higher spheres” suddenly remembered that Zinovy ​​had lived in America for a long time, spoke English and had great acquaintances there. At this time, France made every effort to involve the United States in the war on its side. It was decided to use Zinovy ​​to send him to the USA to promote entry into the war on the side of the Allies. Zinovy ​​did everything to facilitate this.” How an ordinary officer of the French army could contribute to such a grandiose event as the entry of the United States into the war is not clear, unless one takes into account Zinovy’s connections with American financial circles...

Brothers: far left Zinovy ​​Peshkov, second right - Yakov Sverdlov

During the Bolshevik coup, Zinovy ​​Peshkov was in Petrograd and outwardly opposed the pro-German policy of the Bolsheviks. He wrote a letter to the named Father Gorky, in which he urged him to change his pacifist position: “The more Germany seizes territories,” he wrote, “the less we will be able to make peace without annexations. In this decisive battle, waged by the best forces of humanity against brutal forces, can Russia remain peaceful?

Nevertheless, when the Bolsheviks came to power, the French sent Zinovy ​​to Moscow, and he had a meeting “on official business” with his brother Yakov. It is unknown what was discussed between them, but in the summer of 1918 Peshkov headed to Siberia. However, we will give the floor to Peshkov himself. In his questionnaire of the 30s, listing the stages of his military service, he writes: “On January 16, 1918, the War Ministry summoned me to Paris to send me to Russia along the Northern route. On March 7, 1918, I received an order from the General Staff to go to Eastern Siberia, through America and Japan. At the same time, I had a special assignment in Washington from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On June 1, 1918, I arrived in Tokyo, then in Beijing, and at the end of July I was in Siberia.”

Peshkov welcomes Admiral Alexander Kolchak to power in Siberia in September. Under Kolchak, Zinovy ​​Sverdlov played a very important role. Alexander Amfiteatrov wrote about him: “Carrying out his military-diplomatic service in a French uniform, he was an active liaison agent between the French government and the army command. The act of recognizing Kolchak as the supreme ruler by France was delivered to Omsk by Zinoviy Peshkov.”

By a strange coincidence, the brother of one of Kolchak’s main enemies becomes a military adviser to the French representative under the Kolchak government, General Maurice Janin. Let's not forget that Janin, a prominent Freemason, was the curator from French government circles, read Masonic, of the case of the murder of the royal family. “Under Kolchak,” writes Vadim Kozhinov, “the British General Knox and the French General Janin were constantly with their chief adviser, Captain Zinoviy Peshkov (younger brother of Ya. M. Sverdlov). Before us is a truly amazing situation: in red Moscow, then, Yakov Sverdlov plays an extremely important role - second only to Lenin, and in white Omsk, his brother Zinovy ​​resides as an influential adviser!

Zinovy ​​Peshkov-Sverdlov - French general...

Thus, the role of Zinovy ​​Sverdlov in the Civil War in Russia in general and in the Yekaterinburg atrocity in particular requires additional and most careful study. It is possible that the murder of the royal family was supervised by certain behind-the-scenes forces and their representatives, both in the “red” and “white” camps. In both cases, the representatives of these secret forces were the Sverdlovs - Yakov and Zinovy.

As for the second brother, Veniamin (Benyamin, Ben, Beni) Sverdlov, he left for the USA even before the revolution and opened a bank there. After the revolution, American political agents gave the following information about Veniamin Sverdlov: “Office of Special Agents of the New York Branch. Ministry of Foreign Affairs (confidential). Mr. Bannerman is the Chief Special Agent. Washington.

Reilly has business relationship with Veniamin Mikhailovich Sverdlov. On January 15, 1916, Sverdlov arrived in the United States aboard the steamship San Paul. He brought with him a sealed parcel from Colonel Belyaev, a Russian, addressed to General Hermonius, who was connected with some Russian delegations in the United States. Sverdlov was involved in revolutionary activities in Russia in the past. He lived in England for four years and visited Russia in 1915. He knows Siberia well. While in the United States, he worked in the Flint & Co office at 120 Broadway, which owned the building. He is the brother of a prominent communist from Soviet Russia - Sverdlov. While in London, in a private conversation, he stated that he was going with two people to New York to purchase ammunition, but would sail to America separately from these people. He received about one thousand dollars for the trip. He arrived at Flint&Co with the recommendations of partner T. Marshall from London, whose interests were financed by money received from sales of Ural oil. At the beginning of the war, Marshall and Sverdlov often had information about the movement of troops and military operations in England and Russia."

For information, Sidney Reilly, an international adventurer who worked for British, American and German intelligence at the same time, but in fact carried out tasks for the American secret society. Benjamin knew and maintained business relations with the Kuhn, Leib and Co. bank and its leading force, banker Jacob Schiff.

Maxim Gorky with the family of Graver Sverdlov

After October 1917, Yakov summoned his brother to Russia, where he was appointed People's Commissar of Railways, but proved unsuccessful in this post. There is information that Veniamin Sverdlov headed the scientific and technical department of the Supreme Economic Council (a secret division of the OGPU, which was engaged in experiments to obtain telepathic information about the inhabitants of Shambhala and the thoughts of Soviet citizens). In 1937, during the “great purge,” Veniamin Sverdlov was arrested, sentenced to 15 years in the camps, but executed in 1939.

Sverdlov did not like to talk about himself and his family. “Yakov Mikhailovich,” recalled his wife Klavdiya Novgorodtseva, “never liked to talk about himself.” And this is quite understandable: the Sverdlov family hid many secrets. One of them is the fact that, being completely insignificant, neither socially, nor culturally, nor financially, the Sverdlov family knew and maintained close relationships with many influential and famous people of their era. First of all, this concerns Maxim Gorky. Gorky knew the Sverdlovs closely even at the time when Yankel and his brothers were very young. “A frequent guest of the Sverdlovs,” wrote Novgorodtseva, “was Gorky, who lived in Nizhny Novgorod in those years, who knew and appreciated this friendly, interesting family.”

Who, how and under what circumstances brought the famous Russian writer together with the “interesting and friendly family” is unknown, but Gorky showed keen interest in her from the very beginning. When in the spring of 1902 Yankel and Veniamin Sverdlov were once again imprisoned for possessing and distributing banned revolutionary literature, Gorky spoke out in their defense, writing a pamphleteering letter in which he sneered at the Imperial government: “In Nizhny,” he wrote, “there are terrible things are happening! Terrible things! The disgusting criminals, political agitators, revolutionaries, two in number, the sons of the engraver Sverdlov, were caught and imprisoned - finally! Now order will triumph in Russia!” Thanks to Gorky's intercession, the brothers were soon released from custody.

Later, as we know, Gorky took a keen part in the fate of Sverdlov’s older brother Zinovy, adopting him. At the same time, he was also his godfather, which, of course, was sacrilege, since according to Orthodoxy, the father and the godfather cannot be the same person. The “baptism” was carried out in 1902 in Arzamas by priest Fyodor Vladimirsky, a friend of Gorky and a secret revolutionary. (By the way, the son of this priest, Mikhail Vladimirsky, became the People’s Commissar of Health in 1931.) Gorky’s biographer Pletnev wrote: “Of course, there was in fact no “sacrament”, but all this was only formally arranged by the “seditious” priest Vasiliev.” In general, hatred of Christianity was in the blood of both Gorky and his “betrothed son.” Mikhail Parkhomovsky provides information about “comic”, according to his concepts, scenes that were acted out by Gorky, Zinovy ​​Peshkov-Sverdlov and others, and then filmed. “In one picture,” writes Parkhomovsky, “there is a biblical scene called “Marriage in Canna of Galilee.” In the foreground - Christ - V. A. Desnitsky, the kneeling slave - Zinovy ​​and the Virgin Mary - Maria Fedorovna, in the background: the high priest with raised hands - Gorky, the groom - Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky, the bride E. F. Pavlova-Asilvanskaya, the servants - Katya Zhelyabuzhskaya and M. S. Botkina, centurion - Amphitheaters. The entire series of these photographs is called “Sacred History in Faces.”

Yakov Sverdlov, chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in the period 1917-1919, with his family - his wife, Claudia Novgorodtseva and son Andrei, future colonel of the USSR Ministry of State Security.

The purpose of the “baptism,” besides desecration of Orthodoxy, was obvious: to hide behind Peshkov’s surname his connection with Yankel Sverdlov, whose name was becoming increasingly notorious. The authorities understood this, and in 1903, by imperial decree, the clergy of the Trinity Church in the city of Arzamas was ordered to return Zinovy ​​to his real surname: Sverdlov. The fact that both the “baptism” and “adoption” of Zinovy ​​Gorky were clean water a fiction, Gorky himself proves, who wrote to Lenin in 1921: “The other day I called Zinovy ​​​​Peshkov, my so-called adopted son, here from Paris.”

Not only Zinovy, but also Yakov Sverdlov used Gorky’s extensive connections. Thus, in 1903, Yakov, with the help of Gorky, received large financial assistance from Fyodor Chaliapin, who personally donated money for the purchase of a printing unit to Yakov, who came to the Nizhny Novgorod Opera House with Gorky.

But Gorky was not the only one famous people, whose help Yakov used. During the revolutionary unrest, when Yakov was wanted by the police for organizing mass riots involving murders and robberies, Sverdlov was hiding not just anywhere, but in the apartment of the Yekaterinburg City Duma, attorney-at-law Sergei Bibikov, who knew all the local city authorities closely. In 1918, during the height of the Bolshevik terror in Yekaterinburg, “for this service, Sverdlov recommended that the Soviet of Deputies treat the Bibikov family prudently.”

Having completed only four classes primary school Having spent a short time as a pharmacist's assistant, at the age of 15, Sverdlov went into the revolution. The reasons that led Sverdlov to the revolution are vague. The boring lie about “official Russian anti-Semitism” is refuted by Sverdlov himself, who wrote in one of his letters: “I personally never knew national oppression, I was not persecuted as a Jew.” No, the reason for Sverdlov’s revolutionary spirit was based on hatred, and deep and ancient hatred, a feeling that, without a doubt, was cultivated in young Yakov by his father.

What revolutionary organizations did Sverdlov join? This question is very confusing and mysterious, like Sverdlov’s whole life. According to the official Soviet canonical biography of Sverdlov, he acted from the very beginning as a member of the Bolshevik Party. However, there is no evidence that Sverdlov was a member of the RSDLP before 1917. In his leaflets he signed himself as “social democrat” or “group of social democrats”. Most likely, in those years Sverdlov had nothing to do with the Bolsheviks. He represented the interests of secret organizations of the West, and specifically the inhabitants of the skyscraper at 120 Broadway, the same Schiff, Solomon Leib, Colonel Edward House and so on. It was this force that organized entire armed groups of its militants in Russia.

Jacob Schiff - American banker who invested in the Russian Revolution

In 1911, when his wife was about to give birth, Yakov Mikhailovich encouraged her and wrote from prison: “I would like to pour out all my “living spirit” in the hope of strengthening yours.” As we see, the phrase “the spirit is alive” is used in the sense of a certain vital energy. And this combination is characteristic of Sverdlov; it is heard more than once in his conversations and letters. And precisely in this form: not “living spirit”, not “living spirit”, but “living spirit”. That is, this is a term. In Turukhansk exile, where many revolutionaries drank themselves to death and even committed suicide, Yakov Mikhailovich convinces that the main thing is not to lose the “spirit is alive,” to keep the “spirit alive.” This is actually a Kabbalistic term meaning "energy." More precisely, according to occult beliefs, one of several “energies” inherent in humans.

Second example. In the Turukhansk region, back in Kureika, Sverdlov acquired a dog, which he named Pes. And I really loved this animal. The dog was endlessly attached to his owner and never parted with him. Wherever Sverdlov went, the dog followed on his heels. At the end of 1916, the Dog died. Yakov Mikhailovich grieved terribly. But what does a grieving owner do? He asked a local hunter to tan the Dog's skin. And then he took her with him everywhere. In the Kremlin, this skin always lay by the bed of Yakov Mikhailovich.

Those who have pets and are truly attached to them will probably shudder at such a display of “love.” But the fact is that a well-known magical ritual is described here. And not just magical, but black magic. By preserving part of the corpse, necromancers, using certain rituals, try to “draw” the spirit of the deceased creature to the earth, to the material plane. Don't let him go to another world. And use it for your own purposes.

Shambarov also cites facts about Sverdlov’s depiction of occult drawings and his knowledge of magical rituals.

Another mystery is the reason for Sverdlov’s departure to the Urals, where he had neither relatives nor acquaintances. There, in the Urals, on the eve of the 1905 revolution, Sverdlov created an organization called the “Combat Detachment of People's Arms” (BONV), which became one of the most criminal and bloody organizations of the revolution of 1905-1907. This organization was formally subordinate to the combat center, which included Moses Lurie, Erasmus Kadomtsev, Miney Gubelman (Yaroslavsky). But in fact, the absolute master in it was Sverdlov, who acted under the nicknames “Comrade Andrei” and “Mikhailovich”. In BONV, “like in the classic mafia or in the Masonic orders, several levels of initiation into the secrets of the organization were created. Only the one at the top of the pyramid had complete information; he coordinated his actions with the combat center.” One of the active militants of BONV, Konstantin Myachin (aka Vasily Yakovlev), defined the rules that reigned in it: “Rule: one knows - no one knows, two are worse, three know - everyone knows.”

Behind the outward intelligence hid a brutal militant and a tough organizer...

Sverdlov was the leader of all anti-government actions in the Urals. The head of the Perm security department wrote to his superiors that “Comrade Andrei”, or “Mikhailovich”, “after the announcement of the Most Merciful Manifesto on October 17, 1905, led all the riots that took place in Yekaterinburg and constantly presided and spoke at all rallies of a revolutionary nature that took place there...”. In leading the militants, Sverdlov relied on monstrous cruelty. When one of the organization’s members, Ivan Bushenov, expressed disapproval of Sverdlov’s methods, he said in an ominously calm voice: “What, Vanyusha, do you want to make a revolution with white gloves? No blood, no shots, no defeats?

All members of the Yekaterinburg organization of the RSDLP who did not agree with the bloody methods of Yakov Sverdlov were one way or another pushed out of business. The future executioner of the royal family, Sverdlov even then set regicide as his main task. On May 6/19, 1905, on the Tsar’s birthday, Sverdlov wrote a leaflet that said: “Your hour has struck, the last hour for you and all yours! That doomsday, then the revolution is coming! What inhuman, age-old malice emanates from these lines, as if Sverdlov was only voicing, conveying the message of someone else, more powerful than him.

Many accomplices of the Yekaterinburg atrocity of 1918 went through the Sverdlovsk school. He happily attracted criminals and any antisocial element into his ranks. Oleg Platonov cites the memoirs of Social Democrat Nikolai Cherdyntsev, who was in prison with Sverdlov: “Sverdlov does not hesitate to enter into friendly relations with inveterate criminals. Whispers with them. He’s negotiating something.”

“Desperate urkhagans,” writes Eduard Khlystalov, “with aces of diamonds on their backs, were afraid of the puny bespectacled Sverdlov. He did not forgive insults. In the surviving photograph, Sverdlov is sitting in a prison cell on a bunk in front of the “thieves in law,” with his legs folded in Turkish style, according to the thieves’ tradition.”

One of the accomplices in the murder of the royal family, criminal Pyotr Ermakov, on instructions from the party in 1907, killed a policeman and cut off his head; in the same year he committed an armed robbery of a transport with money; another criminal, Ilyusha Glukhar, specialized in killing police officers, whom he killed “in his own way” - with a shot between the eyes; Bolshevik Smirnov, suspecting his wife of betraying him, shot her with his own hands.

It is obvious that at this time the Sverdlovs acted independently, without relying on any Bolshevik structures, which in fact did not exist in the Urals at that time. Who financed and supplied weapons to Yankel Sverdlov and his bandits? After all, the militants received a very good “salary”. “Each vigilante,” wrote one of the militants, Ivan Podshivalov, “received 150 rubles a month in full support.”

Yakov Sverdlov in a group of prisoners in a Perm prison, 1906

It was during the years of the first Russian Troubles that Sverdlov created and organized his own forces in the Urals, which would play an important role in organizing the murder of the royal family.

After the defeat of the revolution, in 1906, Sverdlov was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison. In March 1910, Sverdlov was exiled to the Narym region for a period of three years. In the same year, he writes a petition to replace his period of stay in exile with deportation abroad, which is very similar to returning to his own people after a completed task. This was denied to Sverdlov, and he was exiled to Narym, where he met Shaya Goloshchekin, who later became Sverdlov’s closest accomplice in organizing the Yekaterinburg crime. In July of the same 1910, Sverdlov escapes from exile, he is caught, returned back, he flees again, he is caught again and exiled for five years to the Turukhansk region, where he meets Joseph Stalin. By the way, mutual hostility immediately arose between Sverdlov and Stalin. The February Revolution found Sverdlov in the Turukhansk region.

In March 1917, he left Turukhansk for Krasnoyarsk. There, according to the official Soviet biography Sverdlov, he “exposes the Menshevik-SR compromisers.” On this occasion, researcher German Nazarov writes very correctly: “Which of the Bolsheviks in Krasnoyarsk knew Sverdlov, who spent about seven years in exile with short breaks? It is known that in the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP during the days of the February Revolution there were 14 thousand workers, almost 6,200 employees, a little more than 1,800 peasants and 1,500 representatives of other social strata. In a number of cities and regions of the country, especially in non-industrial centers, the Bolsheviks were members of joint organizations with the Mensheviks. But in Krasnoyarsk there were almost none of them.”

Thus, with all his activities, Sverdlov provided enormous assistance to the revolution. At the same time, being under the banner of Social Democracy, Sverdlov pursued his own far-reaching goals, known only to a small circle of people. To do this, he used a Bolshevik sign. Soviet biographers of Sverdlov, Efim Gorodetsky and Yuri Sharapov, apparently without suspecting it themselves, very aptly described this activity of Sverdlov: “For a decade and a half until October 1917, Sverdlov worked in Russia. He did not have the opportunity to attend a single party congress, although he was an all-Russian worker. His work before the revolution was invisible, according to Lunacharsky’s apt definition. It was precisely that daily work that gradually prepared the revolution.”

Returning to Petrograd again, Sverdlov participates in the 7th April Conference of the RSDLP(b), where he meets Lenin for the first time. At the conference, Sverdlov was elected secretary of the Central Committee, which caused sharp opposition from Lenin. Trotsky writes that later, when Lenin “appraised” Sverdlov, he said: “But we were at first against his introduction to the Central Committee, we underestimated the man to such an extent! There were quite a few disputes on this score, but at the Congress we were corrected from below and they turned out to be entirely right.”

In fact, it is still unclear who “corrected” Lenin and convinced him, or forced him, to include Sverdlov in the party leadership. But it was from this moment that the rapid career growth of Yakov Sverdlov began. Being neither a major party theoretician nor an outstanding speaker, thirty-two-year-old Sverdlov immediately and firmly moved into the forefront of the Bolshevik leadership. Although it is obvious from his report to the Sixth Party Congress that he had little understanding of the party balance of power and even little knowledge of who the Bolsheviks were, this word never appears in Sverdlov’s report. He focused more on the so-called “inter-districts,” among whom were Trotsky, Lunacharsky, Adolf Joffe, and Dmitry Manuilsky.

Sverdlov (standing, second from right) and the future assassin of the Tsar Shaya Goloshchekin (sitting, far left) in a group of comrades returning from exile, March 1917

From the very beginning, Sverdlov's dictatorial habits are evident. He clearly set himself the task of becoming the first person in the party. It got to the point that Sverdlov ignored Lenin. Together with Trotsky, he did everything to prevent Lenin from entering the Smolny premises on the eve of the October revolution.

On October 27 (November 9), 1917, the second day after the coup, at the first meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Lev Kamenev (Rosenfeld) was elected Chairman. But Kamenev did not remain in his position for very long. Eleven days later, he was removed from his post due to “disorganizing policies and insubordination of the Central Committee.” On November 8 (21), 1917, Lenin, unexpectedly for everyone, proposed Sverdlov for the post of chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

From this moment on, Sverdlov acquired virtually an equal position with Lenin, and in some matters, of course, he had more power than Lenin. Karl Radek (Sobelson) recalled: “When I arrived in Petrograd in November 1917 and talked with Vladimir Ilyich about the state of affairs abroad, I asked him who to talk to about all the work, he answered me simply: “With Sverdlov.” Let us note that Radek is talking about work abroad, that is, about connections with foreign forces, and all this work was carried out single-handedly by Sverdlov!

It is no coincidence that Lenin, delivering a speech in memory of Sverdlov on March 18, 1919, said the following: “None of those who knew closely or observed the constant work of Yakov Mikhailovich can doubt that in this sense Yakov Mikhailovich is irreplaceable. The work that he did alone in the field of organization, selection of people, appointment of them to responsible positions in all various specialties - this work will now be within our power only if for each of the large industries that Comrade was solely in charge of. Sverdlov, you will put forward entire groups of people who, following in his footsteps, would be able to come closer to what one person did.”

He remained so adamant in my memory Soviet people at the suggestion of Vladimir Lenin

In March 1918, US President Woodrow Wilson sent a welcoming telegram addressed to Sverdlov to the Congress of Soviets that opened in Moscow. Essentially, this was the recognition by the US government of the Bolshevik regime as the legitimate Russian government. But what the Frenchman Joseph Noulens took as President Wilson’s “unsuccessful initiative” was in fact an expression of support from the same Broadway, 120 of his proteges in Russia.

But it was not only the American president who singled out Sverdlov from the total number of Soviet figures. The German ambassador, despite the fact that Lenin, and not Sverdlov, was the creature of Germany, nevertheless, “conducted the most important affairs primarily with Sverdlov, and not with Lenin. Wilhelm Mirbach was daily provided with a detailed report from the Extraordinary Commission, which gave a complete picture of what was happening in the country.”

Despite this, Sverdlov behaved even with Mirbach like an imperious ruler. Mirbach himself wrote to Berlin about his impression of meeting Sverdlov during the presentation of his credentials: “The presentation of my credentials took place not only in the simplest, but also in the coldest atmosphere. In his response speech, the Chairman expressed his expectation that I would “be able to remove the obstacles that still stand in the way of genuine peace.” There was clearly indignation in these words. At the end of the official ceremony, he did not invite me to sit down and did not deign to have a personal conversation with me.”

With Lenin at the opening of a temporary monument to Karl Marx in Moscow...

On April 8, 1918, Sverdlov virtually single-handedly abolished the national Russian white-blue-red flag, approved as state emperor Nicholas II at the beginning of the First World War, and claims as a new red cloth with Masonic-occult symbols: a pentagram and a hammer. It is interesting that the greatest Satanist of the twentieth century, Eliphas Levi, wrote about the pentagram: “All the secrets of magic, symbols of Gnosticism, figures of the occult, all the keys of Kabbalah - all this is contained in the sign of the pentagram. This sign is the greatest, the most powerful of all signs. He who does not recognize the sign of the cross trembles at the sight of the star of the microcosm.”

It was Sverdlov who introduced the terrifying Chekist leather uniform. Sverdlov himself, according to Trotsky, “walked in leather from head to toe, i.e. from boots to leather caps.”

On July 6, under the most mysterious circumstances, he was killed German Ambassador Count Mirbach. On the night of July 17 - the royal family.

The adventurer Vladimir Orlov, who posed as a white counterintelligence agent who was illegally operating in the Cheka in 1918, and for unknown reasons had close ties with the Bolshevik leadership, 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 deathly pale, jumped to his feet and exclaimed: “Again they are acting without consulting me!” - rushed out of the room. What's happened? The entire Cheka was excited. Screams, exclamations, calls merged into a single hubbub! Dzerzhinsky hurried to the Kremlin. What on earth happened? The next day we learned the news. The imperial family was shot without the knowledge of the Cheka! Independently, on the instructions of Sverdlov and one of the highest bosses in the Central Committee of the Communist Party! According to the general opinion in the Cheka, the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Kremlin, the decision to kill was made and implemented by Sverdlov’s authorities. He carried out the preparations in secret from his comrades and only after the execution confronted them with a fait accompli.”

Sverdlov wanted to shoot them all. And he shot...

In May 1918, Sverdlov initiates the start of a fratricidal war in the village. In his report “On the Tasks of the Soviets in the Countryside,” he says: “We must most seriously pose before ourselves the question of stratification in the countryside, the question of creating two opposing hostile forces in the countryside, set ourselves the task of contrasting the poorest strata of the population with kulak elements in the countryside.” . Only if we can split the village 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 succeed in restoring the rural poor against the rural bourgeoisie, only then will we be able to say that we are doing for the countryside what we were able to do for the cities. ...I have no doubt at all that we will be able to bring work in the village to the proper level.”

And the work was brought to the “proper level”: unprecedented tyranny and violence began in the villages.

Sverdlov sought to seize power. He was clearly becoming the main protege of the world behind the scenes, the person who was supposed to become the leader of the new public education, which arose on the site of Russia.

The murder of the royal family seemed to give Sverdlov the “green light” to prepare a new and, as he assumed, ultimately victorious round of the struggle for power. On August 26, 1918, Sverdlov sent a letter to the Vologda Committee of the RCP(b), signing it with a new title: “Chairman of the Central Committee of the RCP Ya. Sverdlov.” This was the time when it was Sverdlov, and not Lenin, who was called the “Red Tsar”.

Red Tsar Yakov Sverdlov...

Roy Medvedev writes the same thing in his article: “When Lenin was seriously wounded by the Socialist-Revolutionary Kaplan, Sverdlov became the de facto head of the Soviet state for several weeks.”

And even Ivan Plotnikov in 1987, and in those years Sverdlov was for Plotnikov not “Yashka the Hooligan”, but “a hero of the revolutionary struggle,” writes that by the summer of 1918 Sverdlov “essentially became a secretary, the first secretary of the Central Committee in the modern sense "

It is Sverdlov who conducts a hasty investigation into the case of Fanny Kaplan, and it is on his orders that Kaplan is quickly shot and burned in a barrel on the territory of the Kremlin. By the way, this method of covering up tracks in Sverdlovsk style, that is, burning corpses, involuntarily leads us to Ganina Yama. The same is evidenced by the name of the person who led the “investigation” of the Kaplan case - Yakov Yurovsky.

It is interesting that Fanny Kaplan did not hide her hatred specifically for Lenin, and not for the Bolsheviks in general. “The longer he lives,” she said, “the more he removes the idea of ​​socialism by decades.” At the same time, she several times called Lenin a “traitor to the revolution.”

Of course, Sverdlov was not able to act alone. His conspiracy relied on the powerful support of part of the Bolshevik elite. It was in those days that Sverdlov unleashed a monstrous terror against the Russian people, which he called the “red terror,” and it was under Sverdlov’s rule that the “decossackization” we have already mentioned was carried out.

Telling stories in Sverdlovsk...

Such a famous Jewish communist as Louis Aragon openly spoke about the fact that it was Sverdlov who was supposed to become the head of the “new Khazaria”. “Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov,” he wrote, “is 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, was to die of the Spanish flu at the age of thirty-four. I said “to the misfortune of the whole world,” because, of course, if he had survived, Sverdlov, and not Stalin, would have succeeded Lenin.”

Note that Aragon never uses the word “Russia”. We are talking exclusively about the fate of “the whole world”, and it is clear which world and under whose control.

In case of failure, Sverdlov was ready to disappear from the blood-drenched country at any moment. It is quite possible that this was part of the plans of the foreign owners. Bloodless, robbed and dismembered Russia was supposed to have a protege of the secret forces of the West over it. Who it would be - a Bolshevik leader, or a white general - was generally unimportant for them. The main thing is that both of them continue to provide the West with control over Russia and pump out natural and material resources from it.

Hints of such a decision can be heard in a letter Jacob Schiff wrote to the editor of the Parisian newspaper La Tribune Juive. “It is obvious,” he wrote, “that if we do not help those elements who are fighting so heroically in Russia today to defeat the forces of anarchy and disorder that have today established themselves as the Russian government, and if we do not contribute to the establishment of a truly democratic government in their place “, which alone can save Russia, the current regime, which cannot be eternal, will be replaced by a reactionary government, as unacceptable as the Romanovs, whose autocracy brought so much poverty and suffering to the Russian people.”

Victims of decossackization and famine - this is the true monument to Sverdlov...

1. Gold coins of royal minting in the amount of one hundred eight thousand five hundred twenty-five (108,525) rubles.
2. Gold items, many of which are set with precious stones, seven hundred and five (705) items.
3. Seven blank forms of royal-style passports.
4. Seven passports filled out in the following names:
a) Sverdlov Yakov Mikhailovich
b) Gurevich Cecilia-Olga
c) Ekaterina Sergeevna Grigorieva
d) Princess Baryatinskaya Elena Mikhailovna
e) Sergei Konstantinovich Polzikov
e) Romanyuk Anna Pavlovna
g) Klenochkin Ivan Grigorievich
5. One-year passport in the name of Goren Adam Antonovich
6. German passport in the name of Elena Steel.

In addition, royal credit notes worth only seven hundred fifty thousand (750,000) rubles were discovered. A detailed inventory of gold products is made with specialists. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs USSR(Yagoda) July 27, 1935 No. 56568"...

On March 3, 1919, Sverdlov, after returning from Orel, where, according to one official version, he caught a cold while speaking at a rally, and according to another, he was beaten to death by workers, he died suddenly, and died in severe agony, in constant delirium...

Peter MULTATULI, "Ekaterinburg Initiative"