Yakov Blumkin: The Resident's Mistake

The short life of Yakov Blumkin (1900–1929) remains a series of mysteries, secrets, and "white spots," despite his friendships, rivalries, and feasting with many literary figures, including Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Mandelstam, Georgy Ivanov… Some left memories of him resembling pamphlets, while others included him in their works: ."A man, among the crowd .Who shot the imperial ambassador, .Came up to shake my hand, .To thank me for my poems" (N. Gumilev). .And this – the assassination in 1918 of the German ambassador von Mirbach, which sparked the uprising of the Left SRs against the Bolshevik government (as is commonly believed) – is the only indisputable fact of his biography. The other incredible adventures and personas of Blumkin – a Chekist, organizer of the revolution in Persia, "dictator" of Mongolia, treasure seeker of Baron Ungern, military advisor in China, Soviet illegal spy in the Middle East, victim of betrayal by his beloved woman – are perceived as mythology, created not without his involvement. So who was he really – a revolutionary, adventurer, spy, provocateur, secret agent expelled from the USSR by Trotsky?

Evgeny Matonin, a renowned documentary filmmaker and author of the books "Josip Broz Tito" and "Nikola Tesla" ("ZhZL"), has made perhaps the first attempt to reconstruct the real biography of this colorful "hero" of his time based on surviving documents, historical research of the Russian Revolution, and memories, which embodied all the contradictions of the era of great upheavals.