Yacov entered the Minsk Commercial school but was excluded for his membership in revolutionary circles, close to the Bund.

In 1911 he was called up for military service to Perm Infantry Regiment No.101, to the end of the war he served as a record clerk in a management unit.

Solomon Mikhoels, the art-director of the Moscow State Jewish Theatre spoke favourably about Boyarsky's management talent.

French art expert Paul Gsell visited Moscow in 1934 and met Boyarsky, he remembered Yacov Osipovich "as a very active person with a very agile mind".

Yacov Osipovich tried to help and re-employ Mikhail Bulgakov to the theatre, but the writer disliked Boyarsky and left his offer without an answer.

[3][4] The Boyarskys were friends with Sergei Eisenstein and Nikolai Yezhov's family, they even rented a country house together, Yakov Agranov was their close neighbour.

Such prominent art workers as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lilya Brik, Nikolai Aseev, Isaac Babel, and Eduard Bagritsky were their guests.

Under interrogation, Boyarsky refused to confirm any counterrevolutionary activities but didn't reject accusations of homosexuality (presumably, trying to avoid political charges).

On 1 February 1940 Boyarsky was sentenced to capital punishment by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on charges of participating in the ‘Anti-Soviet Organization Of Rights And Trotskyites’.