Vasili Yakovlev

Vasily Vasilyevich Yakovlev (29 August [O.S. 17 August] 1885 – 16 September 1938) was a Finnish (of Latvian ancestry) old Bolshevik revolutionary and politician. He participated in the October Revolution of 1917; transferred former Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family to Yekaterinburg, where they were later killed; rose to become a commander in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War; fled to China after being captured by the White Army, where he became a government advisor; and returned to the Soviet Union in 1928, where he was eventually arrested and executed. Yakovlev was portrayed by the actor Ian Holm in the 1971 film Nicholas and Alexandra.

Vasily Yakovlev was born Konstantin Alekseyevich Mâčin on 29 August [O.S. 17 August] 1885 to the family of Aleksey Mâčin, a Latvian engineer. In 1901 he was recruited as a sailor and studied electrical engineering in Helsinki, where in 1905 he joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and participated in an uprising of sailors. After being sentenced to death in absentia by a military court, he went into hiding under the name Vasily Vasilyevich Yakovlev.

He participated in many acts of sabotage and terrorism, including an armed train robbery through which he seized approximately 1.5 pounds of gold, which was invested into the Party. He managed to escape to Brussels, Belgium, where he worked as an electrician. He was active in Party causes there, and briefly lived in Canada and Germany. After the February Revolution of 1917, in March he returned to Russia through . He was an active member of the Petrograd Soviet, of which he became a deputy commander and a military librarian.

...
Wikipedia