Ukrainian Assassins - Yakov Blumkin, Sholom Schwartzbard, Bohdan Stashynsky, Stepan Fedak, Dmitry Bogrov (Paperback)

Chapters: Yakov Blumkin, Sholom Schwartzbard, Bohdan Stashynsky, Stepan Fedak, Dmitry Bogrov. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 31. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Yakov Grigoryevich Blumkin (Russian: , Ukrainian: 1898 3 November 1929) was a Left Socialist-Revolutionary, assassin, Bolshevik, Cheka agent, State Political Directorate (GPU) spy, and adventurer, executed as Trotskyist. Yakov Blumkin He was born into a Jewish family, was orphaned early in his life, and was raised in Odessa. In 1914 he joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. After the October Revolution, in 1917 he became head of the Cheka's counter-espionage department working for Felix Dzerzhinsky. During the Red Terror, Blumkin was known for his brutality. The following story is recounted about the poet Osip Mandelstam by his biographer Clarence Brown: "One evening early in the Revolution he was sitting in a cafe and there was the notorious Socialist Revolutionary terrorist Blumkin at that time an official of the Cheka drunkenly copying the names of men and women to be executed on to blank forms already signed by the head of the secret police. Mandelstam suddenly threw himself at him, seized the lists, tore them to pieces before the stupefied onlookers, then ran out and disappeared. On this occasion he was saved by Trotsky's sister." Like many Cheka employees at the time, Blumkin was, politically, a Left Socialist-Revolutionary rather than a Bolshevik. Since this party was opposed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Blumkin was ordered by its executive committee to assassinate Wilhelm Mirbach, the German ambassador to Russia; they hoped by this action to incite a war with Germany. This event was timed to occur at the opening of the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. On the afterno...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=4257535