Leaders of the Russian Revolution
Leon Trotsky on Yakov Sverdlov (March 1925)
By
Leon Trotsky
5 October 2017
As part of the commemoration of the centenary of the October Revolution in 1917, the World Socialist Web Site is publishing a series of profiles of leaders of the Russian Revolution. We are publishing here a portrait written by Leon Trotsky of Yakov Sverdlov, the chief organizer of the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and first president of the Soviet Republic.
The article originally appeared in 1925 and was translated into English by the American Trotskyist John G. Wright. It was published in Vol. 7, No. 11, of the Fourth International journal in 1946. What follows is an edited version of this translation prepared by the World Socialist Web Site, together with the original introduction from the Fourth International journal.
Introduction (from the Fourth International journal, 1946)
We are reprinting, on this 29th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky’s brief sketch of the great Sverdlov, the incomparable Bolshevik organizer. It is well to acquaint our readers with this heroic figure, who epitomized the type of revolutionist who made possible the 1917 revolution and the subsequent victory over the counter-revolution.
Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov was born in the city of Nizhny Novgorod on June 3, 1885. His father, an engraver, was able to give his children an education beyond the reach of working-class families in Czarist Russia. As a boy of ten, young Yakov was enrolled in a gymnasium (equivalent to high school) where he studied for five years.
At the age of 15, he left school to work in a drug store. The next year, that is 1901, the first revolutionary underground committee in Nizhny Novgorod was organized. This same year, Sverdlov, at the age of 16, joined…