Yakov Peters

Yakov Khristoforovich Peters (Latvian: Jēkabs Peterss, Russian: Я́ков Христофо́рович Пе́терс, English: Jacob Peters, Jan Peters) (3 December [O.S. 21 November] 1886 — 25 April 1938) was a Latvian Communist revolutionary who played a part in the establishment of the Soviet Union. Together with Felix Dzerzhinsky, he was one of the founders and chiefs of the Cheka (VChK), the secret police of the Soviet Union. He was the Deputy Chairman of the Cheka from 1918 and briefly the acting Chairman of the Cheka from 7 July to 22 August 1918.

Early years

He was born in Brinken volost of Hasenpoth uyezd, Courland Governorate (now Nīkrāce parish, Skrunda Municipality), to a poor farmer's family on December 3, 1886. He became a member of the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1904. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1905 he was arrested in 1907 for the attempted murder of a factory director in Libau, but was later acquitted by the Riga military court in 1908. Peters emigrated to England and lived in London where he was a member of the London Group of the Social Democracy of Latvia and of the British Socialist Party. In 1911, he achieved notoriety in Britain when he and four others were arrested and put on trial in the aftermath of the Sidney Street Siege, following a failed jeweler's shop robbery at Houndsditch in which three police officers were killed. Despite some incriminating evidence (in connection with Peter the Painter), Peters and his companions were acquitted, to the dismay of the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill.