Career
After the October Revolution of 1917, Ganetsky served as Chief Soviet banker, trade representative and Ambassador to Latvia. On behalf of the Soviet government he signed the Peace of Riga and Treaty of Kars. His last post was that of a director of the Museum of the Revolution of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, presently the State Historical Museum.
He was executed during the Great Purge and was rehabilitated posthumously.
Yakov Ganetsky was born in Warsaw, then in the Russian Empire, into the family of a factory owner. In 1896 he joined the Bolshevik fraction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. He moved to Germany in 1901 and studied in rapid succession at Berlin, Heidelberg, and Zurich universities.
He worked as a salesman. Foreign his revolutionary activities Ganetsky was repeatedly arrested.
During World War I Ganetsky, in association with Alexander Parvus and Karl Radek, was involved in secret negotiations with the German General Staff regarding funding of the Bolsheviks and was one of the organizers of the (Copenhagen operation) as well as a mediator between Lenin and the Germans.
He was one of the organizers of Lenin"s return in a "sealed train" from exile in Switzerland to Russia in 1917.
