Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky (19 June 1878-2 August 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and the chief executioner of Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family on 17 July 1918.
Biography[]
Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky was born in Tomsk, Siberia, Russian Empire in 1878; while he was born into a Jewish family, he later converted to Lutheranism. He worked as a watchmaker before joining the Bolsheviks following the 1905 Russian Revolution, and he became a devoted Marxist, frequently being arrested for his revolutionary activities. He joined the Cheka in 1917, and, on the night of 16-17 July 1918, Yurovsky and his squad of Chekists executed Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family at Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Ural. During and after the Russian Civil War, Yurovsky served as a Cheka chief in Moscow, and he later combated theft and corruption in the Soviet State Treasury. He died of a peptic ulcer in 1938.