Yakov Peters

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Yakov Khristoforovich Peters (Russian: Яков Христофорович Петерс, Latvian: Jekabs Peters) (3 December [O.S. 21 November 21] 1886 — April 25, 1938) was a deputy director of the Cheka in the Soviet Union and acting director from July 7 to August 22 1918. In English he was known as "Jacob Peters" or "Jan Peters".

Born in Latvia, he lived in London for a time after the 1905 Revolution. In 1911, he and four others were arrested and put on trial in the aftermath of the Sidney Street Siege that followed a failed jeweller's shop robbery at Houndsditch in which three police officers were killed. They were acquitted to the dismay of the Home Secretary Winston Churchill.

He married Maisie Freeman, the daughter of a London banker, and they had a daughter. He returned to Russia in May 1917 and his wife later divorced him. He participated in the events of the Russian Revolution and joined the Cheka.

In 1920-1922 he was in Tashkent as representative of Cheka in Turkestan ASSR.

He was executed during the Great Purge, in 1938.

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