Born at Chernobyl, son of a Jewish shop assistant, he joined an illegal Marxist group as a teenager in 1896,[1] and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party soon after it was founded.

[3] After the February Revolution, he decided to return to Russia, travelling by ship from Vancouver via Japan, where he was interviewed by agents of the Russian Provisional Government.

"[4] After the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd (St Petersburg) in November 1917, Krasnoshchyokov led the drive to establish the new government's authority in the far east, against local resistance.

He was president of the Far Eastern Soviet of People's Commissars, which was established in Khabarovsk in December 1917, and for about four months in summer 1918 had control of the entire Russian far east, until it was overthrown by the intervention of Czech, Japanese, British and American forces.

Krasnoshchyokov then fled across the taiga, trying to reach territory controlled by the Red Army, but was captured near Samara and sent by 'death train' across Siberia to Irkutsk prison.

In January 1920, with the civil war nearing an end, Krasnoshchyokov crossed the front line to reach Red Army headquarters in Tomsk, and persuaded Vladimir Lenin to create a democratic buffer state in the far east, to enable the allied troops in Siberia to withdraw without loss of face.

He wrote the constitution of the Far Eastern Republic in English, before it was translated into Russian, served as first minister and minister for foreign affairs of the Far Eastern Republic from April 1920 to July 1921, and generally made a very good impression on the English and Americans who met him during this period, particularly the journalist H.K.Norton, who wrote an entire book eulogising Krasnoshchyokov's career.

This established a neutral zone between Verkhne-Udinsk and Chita, allowing the Japanese forces, who were under constant pressure from partisans, to withdraw from Transbaikalia without losing face.

Krasnoshchyokov was removed from office in April, ostensibly because he had contracted tuberculosis, though the real cause appears to have been that local Bolsheviks objected to his leadership style.

In 1922 the American journalist Anna Louise Strong interviewed Krasnoshchyokov about the New Economic Policy (NEP) and about the departure from war communism.

He had made powerful enemies, and appears to have become a focus for resentment against private entrepreneurs who were making money in the relaxed conditions of the New Economic Policy, often in enterprises built on loans provided by Krasnoshchyokov's bank.

Two weeks later, he was denounced in Pravda and Izvestiya by the People's Commissar for Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, Kuybyshev, who accused him of using state funds to pay for "disgraceful drunken sprees, enrich his relatives and so on.".

The main charge a was that the bank had loaned Yakov a large sum at a favourable rate to enable him to set up a privately owned construction firm.

He returned to Moscow in autumn 1925 to work for the Ministry of Agriculture and devoted his energies to improving the cotton crop in Central Asia.