Career
Yakovlev was a Ukrainian Communist who joined the Bolsheviks in 1913. In January 1923 he led the attack on Alexander Bogdanov, criticising him for being a Menshevik in Pravda. From 1929 he served as People"s Commissar for Agriculture for the forced collectivisation.
In 1936 he appeared as a witness in the first Moscow trial.
In 1937 he organized the Great Purge in Belarus, in the following year he fell victim to his own.