Yakov Tryapitsyn  Yakov Ivanovich Tryapitsyn ( (April 25, 1897 – July 9, 1920) was a Russian and Soviet military and political figure. A wartime officer holding the rank of "Praporshchik" in the Imperial Russian Army during the First World War, he subsequently joined the Red Guards, and was appointed the Commander of the Nikolayevsk Front and the Nikolayevsk Military District of the Red Army of the Russian SFSR and the Okhotsk Front of the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. He took an active role in establishing Soviet power in Siberia and the Far East as a participant in the Civil War. He is best known for the role he played in the Nikolayevsk incident in 1920, in which he massacred the entire population of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur and burned the town to the ground. Yakov Ivanovich Tryapitsin was born on April 25, 1897 in the village of Savasleyka in the Muromsky District of the Vladimir Province of the Russian Empire, in the family of a peasant, Ivan Stepanovich Sidorov-Tryapitsyn. He studied at the 4-year school, which he graduated from with a commendable record. In 1915 he entered the work of an assistant to the machinist on a locomotive in the factory's inner yard of the Mordovshchik shipyard. In the summer of 1916, he was enlisted in the Kexholm Regiment of the Imperial Russian Army. He fought in the First World War - rose to the rank of Ensign ("Praporshchik"), and was twice awarded the Cross of St. George. In the spring of 1918, he was demobilized from the active army, in connection with the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, and upon returning to Russia, he joined the Red Guard. He subsequently participated in the suppression of the Samara insurrection from June to October 1918. In the autumn of 1918, he was sent through the Eastern Front to Siberia. At the end of 1918, traveling through Omsk, where he met with a fellow soldier, he left for Eastern Siberia and the Far East, according to the memoirs of the soldier to, "Fight for Soviet Power." In January 1919, he was arrested in Irkutsk by Admiral Kolchak's forces, but managed to escape from prison. At the end of March of the same year, Tryapitsyn arrived in Vladivostok, where he joined an underground organization consisting of port loaders, who stocked up weapons and recruited volunteers to fight the Japanese interventionists supporting the White Movement.