Vasily Vasilyevich Yakovlev (Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Я́ковлев; 29 August [O.S. 17 August] 1885 – 16 September 1938) was a Russian Old Bolshevik revolutionary and politician. He participated in the October Revolution of 1917; was a Cheka officer for a few months; transferred former Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family to Yekaterinburg, where they were later killed; rose to become a commander in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War; fled to China after being captured and released by the White Army, where he became a government advisor; and returned to the Soviet Union in 1928, where he was arrested for desertion and treason, and imprisoned; released in 1933, he was arrested again in 1938 for treason and executed during the Great Purge. Yakovlev was portrayed by the actor Ian Holm in the 1971 film Nicholas and Alexandra.

Vasily Yakovlev was born Konstantin Alekseyevich Mâčin on 29 August [O.S. 17 August] 1885 in Sharlyk to the family of Aleksey Mâčin, a Latvian engineer. In 1901 he was recruited as a sailor and studied electrical engineering in Helsinki, where in 1905 he joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and participated in an uprising of sailors. After being sentenced to death in absentia by a military court, he went into hiding under the name Vasily Vasilyevich Yakovlev.

He participated in many acts of sabotage and terrorism, including an armed train robbery through which he seized approximately 1.5 pounds of gold, which was invested into the Party. He managed to escape to Brussels, Belgium, where he worked as an electrician. He was active in Party causes there, and briefly lived in Canada and Germany. After the February Revolution of 1917, in March he returned to Russia through Stockholm. He was an active member of the Petrograd Soviet, of which he became a deputy commander and a military librarian.

During the October Revolution of 1917 he participated in the capture of the Winter Palace, after which he became the commissioner of the central telephone exchange of Petrograd, and was also a delegate at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

In March 1918, Yakovlev was appointed by the Central Executive Committee to oversee the transfer of former Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family from Tobolsk to Omsk (or Moscow according to other sources), where Nicholas was to be put on trial. The train departed on April 17 but due to the advancement of White Army soldiers loyal to Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, who were blockading the railway as part of the ongoing civil war, orders from Moscow led to Yakovlev diverting the train to Yekaterinburg instead, where it arrived on April 30. The family were then seized by the Ural Regional Soviet and held prisoner in the Ipatiev House until July 17, when they and four retainers were executed.

The above account contradicts that in Robert Massie's book Nicholas and Alexandra, which states that Yakovlev defected from the Bolsheviks and joined the White armies. It describes Yakovlev as being motivated by the desire to save the Imperial family to the extent that he was following his orders, which were to take the family to Moscow.

In Massie's account, Yakovlev arrived at Tobolsk on 22 April, accompanied by one hundred and fifty horsemen and his own private telegraph operator, through whom he could communicate directly with the Kremlin. He carried documents that stated that he should be cooperated with fully, on pain of death. He showed these documents to Eugene Kobylinsky, the officer in charge at Tobolsk. On 25 April, Yakovlev informed Kobylinsky that his mission was to take the Imperial family away from Tobolsk. He did not say at that stage that he was going to take them to Moscow, but those were his orders. However, Yakovlev soon found that Alexei, formerly the heir to the throne, was seriously ill. He communicated this to Moscow, and was told to only take Nicholas. Alexandra, the former empress, decided to go with Nicholas, accompanied by her daughter Maria.

Yakovlev, his troops and his royal prisoners then travelled over three hundred and twenty kilometres to Tyumen, the site of the nearest railway station, with the members of the Imperial family riding in horse-drawn carts. Once at Tyumen, however, Yakovlev came to the conclusion that it would be too dangerous to go through Yekaterinburg because the Ural Regional Soviet would seize his prisoners. He therefore decided to make a detour to Omsk, over five hundred kilometres south-east of Tyumen, from where he could proceed to Moscow without going through Yekaterinburg. However, when the party reached Kulomzino, ninety-six kilometres from Omsk, they were intercepted by troops who had been alerted by the Ural Regional Soviet. Yakovlev then went into Omsk to argue his case with the Omsk Soviet, but could not convince them. He contacted Sverdlov by telegram and was told to take the Imperial family to Yekaterinburg. Acting on Sverdlov's instructions, he proceeded to Yekaterinburg, where the train was surrounded by troops; the members of the Imperial family were then taken away by officials of the Ural Regional Soviet.