Early Years
Yakir was born into the prosperous family of a Jewish pharmacist. Because of governmental restrictions on Jewish access to higher education, Yakir studied abroad at the University of Basel in Switzerland. During World War I, he returned to the Russian Empire and worked in a military factory in Odessa, Ukraine. From 1915 to 1917, he was a student of Kharkiv Technological Institute. He was affected by the war and became a follower of Vladimir Lenin. In 1917, he returned to Kishinev, became a member of the Bolshevik Party and took active part in the Bolshevik seizure of power in Bessarabia. When Romania intervened to recapture Bessarabia in 1918, Yakir led Bolshevik resistance but his small force was overwhelmed by the regular Romanian army.
Read more about this topic: Iona Yakir
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“Her fist of a face died clenched on a round pain;
And sculptured Ann is seventy years of stone.
These cloud-sopped, marble hands, this monumental
Argument of the hewn voice, gesture and psalm,
Storm me forever over her grave”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)