son, and Kryuchkov in retirement continues to blame him for the col-
lapse of the Soviet Union.YAKOVLEVA, VARVARA NIKOLAEVNA (1885–1944). One of the
few women who had a leadership role in the Cheka, Yakovleva was
born into a bourgeois family and studied math and physics at univer-
sity. She was a secretary in the Bolshevik Party’s Moscow branch in
1917 and transferred to the Cheka in 1918. She took an active role in
the Red Terrorin Moscow and had a reputation for enjoying the tor-
ture and executionof prisoners in her hands. In the 1920s Yakovleva
fell into disfavor because of her Trotskyitesympathies. She was
purged and died in detention.YATSKOV, ANATOLI ANTONOVICH (1913–1993). Yatskov joined
the NKVDand entered foreign intelligence in 1939. In 1941 he was
sent to New York under consular cover with the name “Yakovlev.” He
was one of the officers working with Lev Kvasnikovin the collection
of nuclear weapons intelligence through the Enormozproject. He was
Harry Gold’s case officer, and thus was directly responsible for the
running of Klaus Fuchs, the most important Soviet penetration of
the Manhattan Project. After service in New York, Yatskov was one
of the pioneers of Soviet scientific and technical intelligence collec-
tion and analysis. He also taught aspiring foreign intelligence officers
at the Andropov Institute. He retired as a colonel and received sev-
eral combat decorations for his work in foreign intelligence.YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH (1931– ). Boris Yeltsin rose
quickly in the Communist Partyto head the Sverdlovsk party appa-
ratus in the late 1970s. He was, however, twice deeply embarrassed
by the KGBin the 1970s. KGB Chair Yuri Andropovordered him
to destroy the house in Sverdlovsk in which the Romanov family
had been murdered in 1918. A few years later, when a biological
weapons plant released anthrax spoors into the atmosphere in 1979
and 69 people died, he was ordered to cover up the mistake by claim-
ing the problem came from rotten meat.
Catching the eye of reformist party leader Mikhail Gorbachevin
1985, Yeltsin was brought to Moscow as party first secretary in 1985,
and he gained a reputation of being a reformer willing to take onYELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH (1931– ) • 29106-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 291