Yuri Petrovich Gaven (russian: Юрий Петрович Гавен; lv, Juris Gavens) (18 March 1884 – 4 October 1936) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

revolutionary, statesman and Chekist of Latvian ethnicity, a key figure in defeating of the

Crimean People's Republic The Crimean People's Republic ( crh, Qırım Halq Cumhuriyeti; uk, Кримська народна республіка, translit=Kryms'ka narodna respublika; russian: Крымская народная республика, translit=Krymskaya ...

(with establishment of the so-called

Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic The Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic ( rus, Советская Социалистическая Республика Тавриды, r=Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika Tavridy) was an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Soviet republic ...

) and active participant of the

Red Terror The Red Terror (russian: Красный террор, krasnyj terror) in Soviet Russia was a campaign of political repression and executions carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. It started in lat ...

in Crimea.

Biography

Born as Jānis Daumanis in to a Latvian peasant family on 18 March 1884 at the hamlet of Bikern near

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

, in 1901 he graduated the Baltic Teacher Seminary becoming a people's teacher. The same year in 1901 Gaven joined the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; in , ''Rossiyskaya sotsial-demokraticheskaya rabochaya partiya (RSDRP)''), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party, was a socialist pol ...

and until 1905 worked as a secretary of Riga's party organization. During the

1905 Revolution The Russian Revolution of 1905,. also known as the First Russian Revolution,. occurred on 22 January 1905, and was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. The mass unrest was directed again ...

, he was a leader of militant formations of peasants in

Livland Governorate The Governorate of Livonia, also known as the Livonia Governorate, was a Baltic governorate of the Russian Empire, now divided between Latvia and Estonia. Geography The shape of the province is a fairly rectangular in shape, with a maximum ...

and in 1906 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Social Democracy of Livland Krai. On 6 February 1908 Gaven was arrested and until the start of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

(July 1914) he spent time in

katorga Katorga ( rus, ка́торга, p=ˈkatərɡə; from medieval and modern Greek: ''katergon, κάτεργον'', "galley") was a system of penal labor in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (see Katorga labor in the Soviet Union). Prisoner ...

centers of

and

Vologda Vologda ( rus, Вологда, p=ˈvoləɡdə) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Vologda Oblast, Russia, located on the river Vologda (river), Vologda within the watershed of the Northern Dvina. ...

, after which Gaven was exiled to

Minusinsk Minusinsk (russian: Минуси́нск; kjh, Минсуғ) is a historical types of inhabited localities in Russia, town in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. Population: 44,500 (1973). Geography Minusinsk marks the center of the Minusinsk Hollow ...

(at that time part of

Yeniseysk Governorate Yeniseysk Governorate (russian: Енисе́йская губе́рния) was a governorate ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire and later of the Russian Republic, Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic in 1822-1925. General info ...

). After the

February Revolution The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and somet ...

on 3 March 1917, Gaven was released and became a chairman of the local Minusinsk Communa at the same time he also was one of the organizers of the Congress of Soviets of the Middle Siberia. In September 1917 Gaven was delegated to the All-Russian Democratic Conference in

Petrograd Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, after which at the end of September with Bolshevik mandate he was sent to

Sevastopol Sevastopol (; uk, Севасто́поль, Sevastópolʹ, ; gkm, Σεβαστούπολις, Sevastoúpolis, ; crh, Акъя́р, Aqyár, ), sometimes written Sebastopol, is the largest city in Crimea, and a major port on the Black Sea ...

. For some 11 days Gaven spent in

Simferopol Simferopol () is the second-largest city in the Crimea, Crimean Peninsula. The city, along with the rest of Crimea, is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine, and is considered the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. However, ...

awaiting to be allowed in

. On 6–10 November 1917 Gaven was heading the so-called "First Black Sea Fleet Congress" in Sevastopol, which adopted Bolshevik resolution on power and sanctioned to send ships and sailors in fight against

Alexey Kaledin Aleksei Maksimovich Kaledin (russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Каледи́н; 24 October 1861 – 11 February 1918) was a Don Cossack Cavalry General who led the Don Cossack White movement in the opening stages of the Russian Ci ...

. On 20 November 1917 Gaven was a delegate of the Governorate Congress of Soviets in Simferopol and the Bolshevik regional conference on 23–24 November 1917. On the night of 15–16 December 1917 he was one of the leaders of an uprising of sailors which resulted in establishing of the Soviet regime in

by creating the Sevastopol military

revkom {{no footnotes, date=May 2016A revolutionary committee or revkom (russian: Революционный комитет, ревком) were Bolshevik-led organizations in Soviet Russia and other Soviet republics established to serve as provisional gove ...

(Taurida milrevkom since 28 December 1917). Gaven was in charge of the arrests, tortures and mass shootings that accompanied the uprising. From December 18, Gaven headed the Presidium of Soviet of soldiers and workers deputies, the city's Bolshevik committee and was a chief editor of the newspaper "Tavricheskaya Pravda" (Taurida's Truth). He retired in 1933. During the

Stalinist purges The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...

Gaven was arrested in 1936 and accused of “

counterrevolutionary A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revoluti ...

” activities. Gaven was set to be tried, but being too sick to appear at his trial he was taken from his sickbed outside on a stretcher and shot dead on 4 October 1936.

References

External links

Yuri Gaven
at Hronos.
Yuri Gaven
in the

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; ) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Bolshaya rossiyskaya e ...

Yuri Gaven
in the

Handbook on history of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union 1898–1991 A handbook is a type of reference work, or other collection of instructions, that is intended to provide ready reference. The term originally applied to a small or portable book containing information useful for its owner, but the ''Oxford Engl ...

.
Yuri Gaven
in the book of Kir Bulychev, "Return from Trebizond". {{DEFAULTSORT:Gaven, Yuri 1884 births 1936 deaths Bolsheviks Cheka Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Great Purge victims from Latvia Latvian communists Latvian exiles in the Russian Empire Latvian revolutionaries Politicians from Riga People from the Governorate of Livonia Soviet rehabilitations

Biography

References

Further reading

External links