Varvara Nikolaevna Iakovleva

Born Jan. 1, 1884, in Moscow; died Dec. 21, 1944. Soviet state and party figure. Member of the Communist Party from 1904.

Born into a petit bourgeois family, Iakovleva studied in advanced courses for women. She disseminated Social Democratic propaganda in workers’ circles and took part in the Revolution of 1905–07 in Moscow. She became an agent and a member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP in 1912 and secretary of the Moscow regional bureau of the Central Committee in 1916. Iakovleva was exiled to Eastern Siberia in 1910 and 1913 but escaped both times. In late 1913 she was exiled to Astrakhan Province.

During October 1917, Iakovleva was elected to the Party Combat Center, which directed the Moscow military revolutionary committee. In 1918 she served as a member of the Moscow Extraordinary Commission (Cheka) and subsequently became chairman of the Petrograd Cheka. Between 1919 and 1921, Iakovleva held a number of posts. She served in the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Food and in the Siberian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) and headed the Siberian Political Administration of Railroads. In addition, she was secretary of the Moscow committee and subsequently of the Siberian Regional Bureau of the Central Committee of the party. Iakovleva was appointed deputy people’s commissar for education of the RSFSR in 1922 and people’s commissar of finance of the RSFSR in 1929.

In 1918, Iakovleva became associated with the Left Communists. She became a member of N. I. Bukharin’s “buffer” group during the trade-union controversy of 1920–21 and joined the Trotskyists in 1923.

Iakovleva was a delegate to the Seventh, Tenth, Eleventh, Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Party Congresses and was a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.