Vasiliy Kuzmich Averin (Russian:Васи́лий Кузьмич Аве́рин; 1884 – 28 December 1945) was a RussianBolshevik revolutionary, a leading member of theCheka and a member of theSoviet government inUkraine.^[1]

Averin was born in 1884 or 1885 near Rognedino in theRoslavlsky Uyezd of theSmolensk Governorate of theRussian Empire (todayRognedinsky District,Bryansk Oblast,Russia) in a poor peasant family. In 1903 he joined theRussian Social Democratic Labour Party and in 1904 sided withBolsheviks. Averin was uneducated and worked as a mechanic. Averin began his revolutionary career inEkaterinoslav, where in October 1905 he headed a factory committee of the RSDLP. DuringWorld War I in 1915 Averin was arrested and exiled to theIrkutsk Governorate. He was released in April 1917 on amnesty due to theFebruary Revolution in Russia and returned to Ekaterinoslav.^[2]

Averin was a member of theAll-Russian Congress of Soviets, theAll-Russian Central Executive Committee, and theRussian Constituent Assembly. Along withYakov Peters,Felix Dzerzhinsky and others, he was a member of the originalCheka. In December 1917 Averin was appointed to head the military revolutionary headquarters of the Ekaterinoslav Soviet and actively participated in theEkaterinoslav Bolshevik uprising.

With the advance of the German troops, Averin was placed in charge of the defense of the Ekaterinoslav district. He later was appointed as a chief of political department for the Ukrainian Front (also referred to as the Ukrainian Soviet Army). There is some evidence that he also headed a commissariat of internal affairs of the Soviet Ukraine in the beginning of 1919. In 1919 Averin chaired the Ekaterinoslav council and later was a governor of the Volhynia and Kharkiv governorates. In 1921-23 Averin was a governor andmayor of Odessa, while at that time being a member of the Central Committee of theCommunist Party of Ukraine. In 1923 Averin became theLeft Opposition of Bolsheviks (Trotsky's followers). At around that time he also was a member of theCentral Executive Committee of the Ukrainian SSR and theCentral Executive Committee of the Soviet Union.^[3]

In 1935 Averin was appointed the chief of the Lena River Shipping Company and transferred toYakutsk. There in 1937 he was arrested and sentenced to eight years in correctional camps. Averin was released afterWorld War II in November 1945. On 28 December 1945, he was strangled to death by an unknown person. On 29 November 1955, Averin was rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of theYakut ASSR.^[4]

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