Yakov Sverdlov in his office, 1918

Photos of Revolutionary Russia #23

Yakov Sverdlov in his office, 1918 -- Photos of Revolutionary Russia #23

Sverdlov was chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and head of state of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic until his death in March 1919 as a result of the Spanish flu at age 33. This photo is sometimes incorrectly dated as from 1919.

At his funeral Lenin said "Comrades, today, when the workers of all countries are honouring the memory of the heroic rise and tragic end of the Paris Commune we have to inter the remains of Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov. In the course of our revolution, and in its victories, Comrade Sverdlov succeeded in expressing more fully and integrally than anybody else the chief and most important features of the proletarian revolution, and this, even more than his boundless devotion to the cause of the revolution, made him significant as a leader of the proletarian revolution."