What causes hail to fall? What are hail, sleet and freezing rain and what is the difference between them? Some features of the city
Yakov Khristoforovich Peters(Latvian Jkabs Peterss; November 21 (December 3), 1886, Brinken volost, Gazenpot district, Courland province (the territory of modern Latvia) - April 25, 1938) - professional revolutionary, one of the founders and first leaders of the Cheka. Shot during the Great Terror.
Deputy Chairman of the Cheka Felix Dzerzhinsky, Acting Chairman of the Cheka from July 7 to August 22, 1918. He had the badge of an Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU under No. 2.
Biography
In his autobiography, compiled in 1928 upon joining the All-Union Society of Old Bolsheviks, Peters indicated that he was the son of a farm laborer, from the age of 8 he had to look for food and herd cattle from neighboring farmers, and from the age of 14 he began to work for hire from a neighboring landowner together with farm laborers. However, in 1917, Peters, in a conversation with American journalist Bessie Beatty, said that he was the son of a “gray baron” (as rich peasant landowners were called in the Baltic region) and his father had hired workers.
In 1904 he moved to Libau, where he joined the Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party.
During the Revolution of 1905-1907, according to the questionnaire, he campaigned among peasants and farm laborers. In March 1907 he was arrested. He was accused of attempting to kill the plant director during a strike, but was acquitted at the end of 1908 by the Riga Military Court.
In exile (1909-1917)
In 1909 he emigrated to Hamburg, and from there in 1910 he moved to London. Fyodor Rotstein, who helped Russian communists who found themselves in London settle down, recalled that he had to “tinker” with Peters, who, having fled the persecution of the tsarist government, was without a penny of money and did not know a word of English. He was a member of the London Group of Social Democracy of the Latvian Region (SDLC), the British Socialist Party and the Latvian Communist Club.
23 December 1910 Arrested by London police on suspicion of involvement in the murder of police officers during an attempted robbery in Houndsditch on the night of 16-17 December. Peters stated that the robbers were led by his cousin Fritz Swars, but Peters himself did not kill anyone. Soon, on January 3, 1911, the famous “Siege of Sidney Street” took place, where several Latvian terrorists days they fired back at the police. The terrorist hotbed was destroyed only with the participation of military units; The operation on the ground was led by then Home Secretary Winston Churchill. Peters, who is usually identified with the commander of the anarchist group, Pyotr Pyatkov, nicknamed Peter the Painter, was arrested, spent 5 months in prison, after which he was acquitted by a court in May 1911 for lack of evidence.
After his release, he met Claire Sheridan, cousin of Winston Churchill. However, “at one of the parties, Claire noticed that Jacob suddenly lost interest in another political discussion... The reason for this was Claire’s friend - very young, quiet May, the daughter of a London banker.” He married the daughter of a British banker, Maisie Freeman. In 1914, Peters' daughter May was born. Before the February Revolution, Peters occupied the position of manager of the import department of a large English trading company.
During the First World War he was a member of the committee of socialist groups headed by Chicherin.
Revolution of 1917
After February Revolution 1917 arrived through Murmansk to Petrograd. Worked in Riga, member of the Central Committee of the SDLC and representative of the SDLC in the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b). Conducted work among military units on the Northern Front, a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the 12th Army in August-October 1917. After the Germans occupied Riga, he left Riga and, retreating with the troops, stopped in Volmar, where he worked as one of the editors of the newspaper “Tsinya”.
He was sent as a representative from the peasants of the Livonia province to the Democratic Conference convened by Kerensky.
In the October days of 1917, a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, a delegate of the 2nd All-Russian Congress Soviets, member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Prepared military units for the October Revolution.
Jacob Peters, Jekabs Peterss
Date of birth: November 21, 1886
Place of birth: Courland province, Russian Empire(now Skrunda region, Latvia)
Date of death: April 25, 1938 (age 51)
Place of death: Kommunarka
Type of activity:
Deputy Chairman Cheka Felix Dzerzhinsky, v. And. O. Chairman of the Cheka from July 7 to August 22, 1918
Yakov Khristoforovich Peters (Latvian: Jekabs Peters; November 21 (December 3), 1886, Brinken volost, Gazenpot district, Courland province (territory of modern Latvia) - April 25, 1938) - professional revolutionary, one of the founders and first leaders of the Cheka. Shot in 1938 during the Great Terror, rehabilitated posthumously in 1956.
He had the badge of an Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU under No. 2.
In his autobiography, compiled in 1928 upon joining the All-Union Society of Old Bolsheviks, Peters indicated that he was the son of a farm laborer, from the age of 8 he had to look for food and herd cattle from neighboring farmers, and from the age of 14 he began to work for hire from a neighboring landowner together with farm laborers. However, in 1917, Peters, in a conversation with American journalist Bessie Beatty, said that he was the son of a “gray baron” (as rich peasant landowners were called in the Baltic region) and his father had hired workers.
In 1904 he moved to Libau, where he joined the Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party.
During the Revolution of 1905-1907, according to the questionnaire, he campaigned among peasants and farm laborers. In March 1907 he was arrested. He was accused of attempting to kill the plant director during a strike, but was acquitted at the end of 1908 by the Riga Military Court.
In exile (1909-1917)
In 1909 he emigrated to Hamburg, and from there in 1910 in London: Fyodor Rothstein, who helped Russian communists who found themselves in London settle down, recalled that he had to “tinker” with Peters, who, having fled the persecution of the tsarist government, was without a penny of money, didn't know a word of English. He was a member of the London Group of Social Democracy of the Latvian Region (SDLC), the British Socialist Party and the Latvian Communist Club.
23 December 1910 Arrested by London police on suspicion of involvement in the murder of police officers during an attempted robbery in Houndsditch on the night of 16-17 December. Peters stated that the robbers were led by his cousin Fritz Swars, but Peters himself did not kill anyone. Soon, on January 3, 1911, the famous “Siege of Sidney Street” took place, where several Latvian terrorists days they shot back from the police. The terrorist hotbed was destroyed only with the participation of military units; The operation on the spot was led by the then Minister of the Interior Winston Churchill. Peters was arrested, spent 5 months in prison, after which in May 1911 he was acquitted by the court for lack of evidence.
After his release, he met with Claire Sheridan, Winston Churchill's cousin. However, “at one of the parties, Claire noticed that Jacob suddenly lost interest in another political discussion... The reason for this was Claire’s friend - very young, quiet May, the daughter of a London banker.” Married the daughter of a British banker Maisie Freeman(Maisie Freeman). Peters' daughter was born in 1914 May. Before the February Revolution, Peters occupied the position of manager of the import department of a large English trading company.
During the First World War he was a member of the committee of socialist groups headed by Chicherin.
Revolution of 1917
After the February Revolution of 1917, he came to Petrograd through Murmansk. Worked in Riga, member of the Central Committee of the SDLC and representative of the SDLC in the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b). He worked among military units on the Northern Front, a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the 12th Army in August-October 1917. After the Germans occupied Riga, he left Riga and, retreating with the troops, stopped in Volmar, where he worked as one of the editors of the newspaper “Tsinya”.
He was sent as a representative from the peasants of the Livonia province to the Democratic Conference convened by Kerensky.
In the October days of 1917, a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, a delegate to the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets, a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Prepared military units for the October Revolution.
Work in the Cheka-GPU
After the October Revolution, a member of the board and an assistant (essentially a deputy) to the chairman and treasurer. Since April 1918, he was the first secretary of the party organization in the history of the Cheka.
It is with his name that the formation of the image of the “Latvian face” of the Cheka is associated: “The fact that the second person in the department of “proletarian reprisals” became J. H. Peters, who widely attracted his comrades and fellow countrymen who went through the difficult school of the Social Democratic underground in the Baltic region, who had experience of conspiracy and participation in military squads of 1905-1907.”
Led the liquidation of the Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom B. Savinkova in Moscow and Kazan.
He took part in uncovering the Lockhart conspiracy and led the liquidation of the Left Socialist Revolutionary uprising of 1918. Since the murder of Mirbach on July 6, 1918 was carried out with documents signed by Dzerzhinsky, he was temporarily removed from the post of chairman of the Cheka, and his place was taken by Jacob Peters, who formed a new board of the Cheka exclusively from communists. On August 22 (after Dzerzhinsky's return), Peters was confirmed as his deputy.
He led the investigation into the case of the Socialist-Revolutionary F. Kaplan who attempted to assassinate V.I. Lenin.
On January 9, 1919, J. Peters, participating in a meeting of the Presidium of the Cheka (in addition to him, M. Latsis, Ksenofontov and secretary Murnek were present), issued a resolution: “The verdict of the Cheka against persons of the former imperial pack is to be approved by reporting this to the Central Executive Committee.” According to this resolution Grand Dukes were shot in Petrograd Nikolai Mikhailovich, Georgy Mikhailovich, Pavel Alexandrovich and Dmitry Konstantinovich.
He worked at the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal, since 1918 one of its three chairmen, who sat alternately.
In March 1919, he was replaced as deputy chairman of the Cheka by Ksenofontov, Ivan Ksenofontovich, and in the same month he was sent to Petrograd, where he was appointed head of internal defense, and then commandant of the fortified area.
On June 11, 1919, J. Peters developed and sent out “instructions for conducting an inspection of Petrograd” to the regions. According to this instruction, each district was divided into sections in which a complete inspection of all residential and non-residential premises, the main purpose of the searches was to find weapons. The following were subject to detention during searches: all persons who had with them firearms without the appropriate permissions, except only the owners hunting rifles; deserters; unregistered citizens; persons who did not have residence permits at all; all former police officers up to and including police officers and all former gendarmerie officers and non-commissioned officers.
On June 14, an order was given to begin a thorough inspection of all suspicious places and buildings in the districts, churches of all religions, bell towers, attics, basements, sheds, warehouses and squares.
In July 1919, with the retreat of the White troops of the Northern Corps (later the North-Western Army) from Petrograd, the department of the head of the internal defense of Petrograd, headed by Peters, was abolished by the establishment of the RVS of the 7th Army, and in its place the department of the head of the Petrograd fortified district. Peters became commandant of the fortified area and a member of the Defense Committee.
In August 1919, Peters was appointed commandant of the Kyiv fortified area and head of the garrison. At this time, Denikin’s white army and Petliura’s troops were advancing on Kyiv from different sides.
Unable to change anything militarily, Peters and Latsis began to take it out on the internal enemy<...>One morning the newspapers came out with an endlessly long, two-column, list of those executed. There were, I think, 127 people; The motive for the execution was stated to be a hostile attitude towards the Soviet regime and sympathy for the volunteers. In fact, as it turned out later, the board of the Cheka, reinforced by Peters, decided to carry out a mass execution and selected from the list of prisoners everyone against whom at least something incriminating could be brought up<...>the actual number of those executed was not limited to the list given in the newspapers. On the very last day before the departure of the Bolsheviks, the checks were shot without any accounting or control.
After the fall of Kyiv, Peters was a member of the Military Council in Tula.
In the winter of 1919-1920 he worked in Moscow as deputy chairman of the Special Committee of the STO for the implementation of martial law in railways. In January 1920 - plenipotentiary representative of the Cheka in the North Caucasus, commissioner of the North Caucasus Railway.
In Turkestan
In 1920-1922, member of the Turkestan Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), plenipotentiary representative of the Cheka in Turkestan and head of the Tashkent Cheka. He led operations against the anti-Bolshevik formations of Dutov, Annenkov, and Enver Pasha.
In May 1921, in Tashkent, he met F.A. Rothstein, an acquaintance from London, who was appointed plenipotentiary envoy to Persia and accompanied him to Persia with an armed detachment of security officers.
In the summer of 1921, by order of Peters, Prof. P.P. Sitkovsky and all the doctors of the Sitkovsky clinic on charges of sabotage. Peters decided to make the trial a show and acted as a public prosecutor at the trial.
In Moscow
In February 1922, Peters was recalled to Moscow and appointed a member of the Collegium and head of the Eastern Department of the GPU, created on June 2, 1922. The new department united the work of security officers in the Caucasus, in the Turkestan, Bashkir, Tatar and Crimean Autonomous Republics, Bukhara and Khiva People's Republics. The new department was charged with the development of materials for the overseas part of the INO from the countries of the East, execution operational tasks the eastern department was mandatory for INO. The branches in the Eastern Department were led by Peters' deputy Vladimir Styrne, Eichmans and Mikhail Kazas. While working in the Eastern Department, Peters in 1925 was also the chief inspector of the OGPU border troops. On the 10th anniversary of the Cheka in December 1927, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
On October 31, 1929, J. X. Peters was relieved of his duties as a member of the Collegium and head of the Eastern Department of the OGPU. His KGB stage of his biography formally ended here, although Peters continued to work in control bodies.
At the end of 1929, Peters headed the commission on cleaning employees of institutions Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Of the 259 academicians and corresponding members, 71 were expelled, mostly scientists in the humanities. Many of them were arrested under the so-called “ Academic affairs" The investigation into this case lasted for more than a year. The OGPU accused 70-year-old academician S.F. Platonov and his associates of intending to overthrow Soviet power and form a Provisional Government with the subsequent restoration of the monarchy in Russia.
Since 1930, a member of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission-NRKI, at the 12-16th party congresses he was elected a member of the Central Control Commission. In 1930-1934, chairman of the Moscow Control Commission (MCC) of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. at the 17th Congress he was elected a member of the CPC under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
Arrested on November 27, 1937. Shot April 25, 1938 at the Kommunarka training ground. March 3, 1956 The Supreme Commander of the USSR Armed Forces was rehabilitated.
Quotes
Lockhart: “I always warned that you cannot trust people who arrived from Russia, no matter what surnames they bear, since there is a high probability that these people visited the offices of the Lubyanka... Under the yoke of the charm of their owners, I myself almost stayed in Moscow to begin the life of an ideological fighter against world capitalism... I never believed the ROWS. The old people there have lost their fighting spirit, and their children are entirely Peters’ agents.”
Essays
Peters Ya. Memories of work in the Cheka in the first year of the revolution // Proletarian Revolution. - 1924. - No. 10 (33). - P.5 - 32.
Links:
1. Tukhachevsky suppresses the Tambov uprising
2. Ismail Akhmedov: Kim Philby found me
3. Yagoda Genrikh (Enoch) Grigorievich (Gershenovich)
4. Left Socialist Revolutionary rebellion in Moscow 1918
5.
Peters' childhood and youth
Peters, Yakov Khristoforovich (born November 21 (December 3), 1886 in the Courland province (Latvia), executed on April 25, 1938) - the most prominent after Dzerzhinsky early figure Cheka.
In his “official” autobiography, Peters claimed that he was the son of a farm laborer and, due to poverty, from the age of eight, herded cattle for his neighbors. However, before compiling this biography, in a conversation with the American journalist Beatty (1917), he said that he was the son of a rich Latvian peasant, who himself had farm laborers on his farm.
Member of the Latvian Social Democratic workers' party since 1904.
Peters took part in the revolution of 1905-1907 and in March 1907 was arrested for the attempt on the life of the director of one of the Libau factories during a strike. However, at the end of 1908 the Riga Military Court acquitted him.
Jacob Peters
Peters in London
In 1909, Peters emigrated from Russia - first to Hamburg and then to London. He belonged to the London group of Social Democracy of the Latvian Region (SDLC), and joined the British socialist party. At first he lived in London in great poverty.
In December 1910, London police were called by residents of 119 Houndsditch Street who reported that some criminals were trying to break through the wall of one of the apartments in order to enter a neighboring jewelry store. The robbers opened fire on the arriving police, killed two constables, wounded four more and fled. It soon became clear that the killers belonged to a Latvian “anarchist” group, whose leader was a certain Fritz Svaars. During the arrests that began throughout the city, Swaars' cousin, Jacob Peters, was captured. The examination showed that all the bullets that hit the police on Houndsditch Street were fired from a Dreyse M1907 pistol that belonged to Peters.
On January 2, 1911, the police found that three of the attackers on the police - Votel, Swaars and Pyatkov - were holed up in an apartment at 100 Sydney Street. Up to 200 policemen arrived at this house. All residents of other apartments were evacuated, and a siege began, accompanied by heavy pistol fire. The Minister of Internal Affairs personally arrived to lead it - Winston Churchill, who had to call in the Scots Guards and artillery to help the police. The house was almost completely destroyed during the assault. The bodies of Swaars and Votel were found in the burnt apartment.
There was information that the main leader of the gang was “Peteris the Artist”. Many identified this person with Jacob Peters. But he, despite the strongest evidence, denied his complicity in the crime on Houndsditch. The Dreyse M1907 pistol that belonged to Peters was found near the body of the murdered robber Georg Hardstein after the shooting at Houndsditch. This served as an exculpatory clue for Peters, although Gardstein had cartridges of a different caliber with him - for the Mauser C96 pistol. Peters firmly denied the possibility of his presence on Houndsditch Street - and in May 1911 he was acquitted by the court for lack of evidence.
Soon after, he married the daughter of British banker May Freeman. In 1914 their daughter Maisie was born. Thanks to good marriage Peters received a position as manager of the import department of a large English trading company, but continued to maintain connections with the socialists.
Participation in the October Revolution
After February Revolution Peters came from England to Petrograd and then to Riga. There he became a member of the Central Committee of Social Democracy of the Latvian region, represented this party in the Bolshevik Central Committee, and was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the 12th Russian Army stationed in Latvia. After the Germans occupied Riga, Peters moved to Wolmar (Valmiera), where he edited the socialist newspaper “Cinya”. His wife and daughter came to him from England. Maisie was never able to leave the USSR and died there in 1971.
Peters was a representative “from the peasants of the Livonia province” in Democratic meeting 1917. From Latvia he moved to Petrograd and during October Revolution 1917 was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee. Delegate II All-Russian Congress of Soviets, he was elected to All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
Peters - security officer
Soon after the Bolsheviks created the Cheka, Peters became an assistant (first deputy) to its chairman, Dzerzhinsky. Peters' fellow countrymen - Latvian riflemen– were the main one armed force communist power in the first months of its existence. The Latvians, patronized by Peters, along with the Jews, took an active part in the initial chekism.
Members of the board of the Cheka (from left to right) J. Peters, I. Unshlikht, A. Belenky (standing), F. Dzerzhinsky, V. Menzhinsky (1921)
Peters actively participated in the most famous operations early period Cheka: in revealing the inflated Dzerzhinsky " Lockhart conspiracy", V actions against anarchists in Petrograd and Moscow. On May 29, 1918, Peters led the seizure of a secret residence Savinkovsky « Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom» (Moscow, Maly Levshinsky lane, building 3, apartment 9). He took part in the defeat " Left Socialist Revolutionary rebellion"(July 1918). This rebellion has begun assassination of the German ambassador Mirbach which the terrorist Blumkin committed with the help of documents signed by the enemy Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky, who played a very ambiguous and mysterious role in the events, fell under suspicion, was temporarily removed from the post of chairman of the Cheka and replaced by Peters, who assembled a new KGB board of only communists, without the left Socialist Revolutionaries. But on August 22, Dzerzhinsky again received his previous position, and Peters again became his deputy. Soon he was entrusted with the investigation into the case of the attempted murder Lenin Social Revolutionaries Fanny Kaplan.
Peters combined his security duties with work in the Moscow revolutionary tribunal. Since 1918, he was one of its three alternate chairmen.
January 9, 1919 meeting of the Presidium of the Cheka chaired by Peters and with the participation M. Latsis and I. Ksenofontov approved the “sentence against the persons of the former imperial pack.” According to this verdict, four members of the imperial family were shot in Petrograd - Grand Dukes Nikolai Mikhailovich, Georgiy Mikhailovich, Pavel Alexandrovich and Dmitry Konstantinovich. The shooting was presented as a “response to murder in Germany” Karl Liebknecht And Roses Luxemburg"(who made unsuccessful attempt violent communist takeover).
Victims of the Red Terror in southern Russia
In March 1919, the post of deputy chairman of the Cheka was taken by I. Ksenofontov, and Peters was sent to the threatened offensive Yudenich Petrograd. There he was appointed “commandant of a fortified area” and, in order to confiscate weapons from citizens, conducted sweeping searches throughout the city, accompanied by mass arrests.
After the suspension of Yudenich's offensive, Peters, together with Latsis, was (August 1919) transferred to Kyiv, to which the troops were marching Denikin. Here he also became the commandant of the fortified area and the commander of the garrison. Lacking military talent, Peters and Latsis resorted to their usual method: mass terror. The number and cruelty of the extrajudicial executions carried out in Kyiv boggled the imagination. The Kyiv Cheka, along with the Kharkov one, where he committed atrocities Saenko, became a bloody symbol of the then Bolshevik regime. Modern historian V. Shambarov in his work “White Guard” (Chapter 64) writes:
Kyiv probably knew on its own skin all types of Bolshevik executioners; a complete collection of monsters was rampant here. VUCHK was headed by the famous Latsis, a theoretical executioner. Handsome and outwardly well-mannered, he carried out terror with Latvian methodology. And he wrote “ scientific works» with statistical data and diagrams examining the distribution of executions by gender, age and class of victims, their time and seasonal dependencies. And he laid out the theoretical foundation of Marxism under his data. There was an executioner-robber Paraputz, the nephew of Latsis, who profited from the things of the people he killed. There were sadistic executioners Ioffe and Avdokhin, nicknamed the “angel of death,” who took pleasure in the killing process itself. There was an executioner-cocaine addict Terekhov. And the “romantic” executioner Mikhailov, an elegant and dapper type - he loved summer on moonlit nights let out into the garden naked women and hunted them with a revolver. There was the ideological executioner Asmolov, who exterminated people with the cold Bolshevik confidence that he was building a bright future. There was an innovative executioner Ugarov, who experimented in a concentration camp - introducing numbers there instead of surnames, inventing and improving the camp order and the system of extermination from scratch.
The worse the situation was for the Reds on the fronts, the more terrible they recoiled at local population. According to the Central Committee of the Red Cross, the Kyiv security officers were almost all alcoholics, cocaine addicts, pathological sadists, who had lost their human appearance and increasingly, as their “work” progressed, revealed mental abnormalities. So, when the film “His Excellency’s Aide-de-Camp” is shown on television again, make yourself an appropriate adjustment before swallowing this poison. After all, the pure and noble heroes of the film are those same Kyiv security officers who drowned in the blood of the innocent. Only according to official (Bolshevik!) data, and only the Cheka (not counting tribunals, etc.), more than 3 thousand people were shot in Kyiv... [According to an investigation conducted by whites - 10 thousand.]
The Bolshevik agony of Kyiv was terrible. In addition to the local executioners, Moscow sent the deputy chairman of the Cheka, Peters, appointing him commandant of the Kyiv fortified area. Latsis became his deputy. Naturally, they could not change the situation at the front, but the latest wave of terror that fell on the civilian population overwhelmed all the previous ones. An eyewitness wrote:
“...Every day, a detachment of Chinese soldiers escorted 60–70 unfortunate suicide bombers through the streets. This was another batch destined for execution at midnight. Weakened by hunger, torture, and the mockery of drunken security officers, they dragged their feet with difficulty. There were no criminals here at all. Only the cultural forces of the country were exterminated. The published lists listed their titles and occupations. By the end of August, only the emergency rooms remained, in which drunken security officers with devilish cruelty finished off the unfortunate martyrs at night. In barns and stables, in the courtyards of the Cheka, they were killed with cold steel, iron pitchforks and wine bottles...”
But wine bottles, pitchforks and Chinese mercenaries, of course, could not stop the white companies; the front was collapsing. On August 30, the commissioners fled...
[After Kyiv was occupied Volunteer Army Denikin], townspeople went in an endless stream to Lipki - formerly a district of rich and beautiful mansions, surrounded by greenery. They were chosen by the red punitive institutions, and now the people of Kiev, holding their noses from the unbearable stench, looked at the terrible basements, splashed with a thick layer of human blood and brain, to open graves, trying to find missing relatives and friends. In order not to go far, the security officers turned the flower beds, gardens and squares surrounding the mansions into mass burial grounds...
Together with the red units, Peters fled from Kyiv to Tula. In the winter of 1919-1920 he helped to impose martial law on the railways, and in January 1920 he was made plenipotentiary representative of the Cheka in the North Caucasus.
Chekist. Generalized image
Characteristics of Peters
Roman Gul in his biography of Dzerzhinsky he writes:
Dzerzhinsky's first constant assistants in the Cheka were two famous Latvians, members of the Cheka board Peters and Latsis.
A man with a mane of black hair, a sunken nose, a bulldog's jaw, a large narrow-lipped mouth and slits of dull eyes, Jacob Peters - right hand Dzerzhinsky. Who is he, this bloody man greedy for money and power? The stinking flower of the Bolshevik underground, this Chekist Sparafucile, is a man without a biography, a Latvian rogue, unconnected with either Russia or the Russian people.
When in 1917, hung with Mausers, in a Chekist uniform, leather jacket. Peters appeared at the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies, where there were still socialists, the latter greeted him with frantic shouts: “Security guard!” But Peters was not embarrassed: “I am proud to be a guardian of workers,” he answered with impudence. And just two years later, after many bloodbaths given by Peters to the Russian proletariat, this rogue, having arrived in the Tambov province to pacify the peasants agitated by communist extortions, gave a brief order: “Carry out merciless red terror on the families of the rebels, arrest everyone in the families from 18 to years of age, regardless of gender, and if unrest continues, shoot them as hostages, and impose extraordinary indemnities on the villages, for non-fulfillment of which land and all property will be confiscated.”
Here he is - the “guardian of the working people.” October Revolution made this rogue one of the all-powerful figures of the secret communist police. Like every nobleman and dignitary, Peters suffers, of course, from an itch for a certain pose. Therefore, not only Trotsky, but also Peters have their own “historical” phrases. Peters said: “It is clear to every revolutionary that a revolution is not made with silk gloves.” Peters threatened: “Any attempt by the counter-revolution to raise its head will be met with such reprisals that everything that is meant by the Red Terror will pale in comparison.”
This right hand of Dzerzhinsky, Peters, the executioner of a dozen Russian cities, wrote the bloodiest pages in the chronicle of communist terror. He flooded the Don, St. Petersburg, Kyiv with blood, he depopulated Kronstadt with executions, he committed atrocities in Tambov in legend.
Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's secretary, who fled to the West in 1928, notes in his memoirs:
During my... stay in Ukraine, I learned many facts about the brutal, bloody terror carried out by the Chekists. I arrived in Moscow with extremely hostile feelings towards this department. But I practically didn’t have to deal with it before my work in the Orgburo and Politburo. Here I first of all met with members of the Central Control Commission Latsis and Peters, who were at the same time members of the GPU collegium. These were the same famous Latsis and Peters, who were responsible for brutal mass executions in Ukraine and other places civil war– the number of their victims was in the hundreds of thousands. I expected to meet frenzied, gloomy fanatic killers. To my great surprise, these two Latvians were just ordinary scum, ingratiating and obsequious little scoundrels, trying to forestall the wishes of the party authorities. I was afraid that when I met these executioners, I would not be able to accept their fanaticism. But there was no fanaticism. These were execution officials, very busy with their personal careers and personal well-being, vigilantly watching how they waved their fingers from Stalin’s secretariat.
Peters after the Civil War
In 1920-1922, Peters was a member of the Turkestan Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), plenipotentiary representative of the Cheka in Turkestan. IN Central Asia he took part in the fight against Cossack detachments Dutova And Annenkova, Basmachi Enver Pasha.
In February 1922 Peters was returned to Moscow and appointed a member of the Collegium GPU(which has now replaced the Cheka). From the summer of 1922, he headed the Eastern Department of the GPU, which was in charge of operations in the Caucasus, Turkestan, Crimea and the Muslim regions of the Volga region. At the same time, he served (1925) as chief inspector of the OGPU border troops. In December 1927 he received the Order of the Red Banner.
On October 31, 1929, Peters was relieved of his duties as a member of the Collegium and head of the Eastern Department of the OGPU. He lost influence at the top of the punitive bodies, but did not completely stop working in them. At the end of 1929, Peters headed the commission to clean up the institutions of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Of the 259 academicians and corresponding members, 71 lost their titles after this purge. These were, first of all, humanities scientists. Many of them were arrested under " Academic affairs", during which the largest historian, author of a brilliant textbook and lectures on Russian history, Academician S. F. Platonov, was accused of intending to overthrow Soviet power and restore the monarchical system.
Until 1934, Peters was a member of the Central Control Commission ( Central Control Commission) VKP(b).
During Great Terror Stalin Peters was arrested (November 27, 1937) and executed (April 25, 1938) at Kommunarka training ground.