Yakov Hanecki (known in Russia as Yakov Stanislavovich Ganetsky - Яков Станиславович Ганецкий), real name Jakub Fürstenberg (Fuerstenberg) also known as Kuba (15 March 1879 — 26 November 1937) was a prominent Polish communist and close associate of Vladimir Lenin, famous as one of the financial wizards who arranged, through his close working relationship with Alexander Parvus, the secret German funding that helped the Bolsheviks seize power in the October Revolution of 1917 - after which he served as a middle ranking Soviet official until his arrest and execution in 1937.
Early career
Yakov Hanecki was born in Warsaw, Vistula Land, Russian Empire, the son of Stanislav von Fürstenberg, a beer manufacturer of German-Jewish descent, who had adopted Poland as his homeland. In 1896 he joined the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP - later the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL)) led by Rosa Luxemburg and her lover, Leo Jogiches. He moved to Germany in 1901 and studied in rapid succession at Berlin, Heidelberg, and Zurich universities. From 1902, he was a professional revolutionary, normally based in Cracow, under Austrian rule, organising the transport of illegal literature across the Russian border. In August 1903, as a member of the Main Administration of the SDKPiL, he was one of two Polish delegates to the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in Brussels. The Congress later adjourned to London, under pressure from the Belgian police, and there the RSDLP split into its Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, but Hanecki and the other Polish delegate, Adolf Warski, did not make the journey to London, having failed to agree terms on which the RSDLP and SDKPiL could collaborate.
At the outbreak of the 1905 revolution, Hanecki returned illegally to Warsaw, with Felix Dzerzhinsky to run the SDKPiL's underground organisation, until Jogiches arrived, in October. He was a Polish delegate to the Fourth and Fifth RSDLP congresses in Stockholm, April 1906, and London, May 1907, and at the latter was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. Arrested several times, he escaped every time. He also facilitated Jogiches's escape from prison in April 1907, by bribing a police officer.
But in 1910, exasperated by Jogiches's refusal to allow discussion within the SDKPiL over issues such as whether to participate in the recently legalised trade unions (which Jogiches opposed), Hanecki toured Germany and Austria, organising what became known as the 'Zhaddovites'. This group held its own conference in Warsaw in December, and subsequently created a separate organisation, of which Hanecki was the undisputed leader. Other members included Karl Radek, Josef Unshlicht, Yakov Dolecki - all later high ranking officials in the Soviet Union - and two future leaders of the Communist Party of Poland, Henryk Domski and Julian Lenski.
Lenin's agent
Hanecki first met Lenin in Brussels in 1903, and was in contact with him in Finland in 1907, and assisted him in moving his household to Cracow in 1912. He also persuaded Lenin to intervene in Polish affairs, siding with the Rozlamovists against Leo Jogiches and Rosa Luxemburg, and became one of Lenin's most trusted agents. He acted as chairman of the three man committee - whose other members were Lenin and Grigori Zinoviev - who looked into whether Roman Malinovsky, the former head of the Bolshevik parliamentary delegation, was a police spy, and wrongly exonerated him. Lenin and Hanecki were living in Poronin, a village close to the border, when war broke out between Austria and Russia in August 1914, and Lenin was threatened with arrest, as a Russian. Hanecki rescued him by arranging transport to the nearest town, Nowy Targ where - according to Lenin's widow - he warned the local chief of police that Lenin was an important figure in the world socialist movement and "a man for whose life he, the commander, would have to answer."