Founder of Ukrainian Bolshevism, signatory of the Declaration of the 46
Sentenced to death by Petliura's forces, he escaped wounded at the last moment and hid until the Red Army arrived.
Yakov Drobnis was a Jewish worker-revolutionary who joined the Bolsheviks in 1906 at age sixteen, helped found the Ukrainian Communist Party in 1918 and served on its Central Committee through five convocations. During the Civil War he organized partisan detachments against Petliura and Denikin, chaired the Poltava and Odessa soviets, and served as secretary of the Ukrainian CP Central Committee in 1922. A signatory of the 1923 'Declaration of the 46', the founding document of the Left Opposition, he was expelled in 1927, reinstated in 1930, and executed in 1937 as a defendant at the second Moscow Show Trial.
Career Timeline
- 1906Joined RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
- 1918–1920Co-founded Ukrainian CP; CC member through five convocations
- 1920–1922Chairman, Poltava and Odessa soviet executives
- 1922–1923Secretary, CC of Ukrainian CP
- 1923Signed 'Declaration of the 46,' joined Left Opposition
- 1923–1927Deputy Chair, Lesser Sovnarkom; Admin-Financial Commission, USSR Sovnarkom
- 1927–1930Expelled and exiled; reinstated 1930
- 1937Defendant at second Moscow Show Trial; executed