He also clarified that the sofa was purchased by the Yakovlevs from Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, Vladimir Lenin’s mother, in 1887.

Ivan Yakovlevich Yakovlev was born on April 25, 1848 in the Chuvash village of Koshki-Novotimbaevo, Buinsky district, Simbirsk province. He was a cultural figure and education advocate of pre-revolutionary Russia, a teacher, scientist, and writer. In the 1880s, Ivan Yakovlevich held the position of inspector of Chuvash schools of the Kazan Educational District, which included the Simbirsk province. Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, Vladimir Lenin’s father, also worked there as director of public schools. Ivan Yakovlevich was a good friend of Ilya Nikolaevich.

Ivan Yakovlevich carried out the administrative and pedagogical management of the Simbirsk Chuvash school, which trained teachers for public schools in the Volga region, taught there himself, opened and inspected schools in the areas where the Chuvash population lived.

The Simbirsk Chuvash School became the center for the creation of a new Chuvash writing system: people there engaged in translations, published books in the Chuvash language and distributed them in tens of thousands of copies among the rural population. Throughout his life, Ivan Yakovlevich was engaged in educational activities in masses, developing culture and national identity. He was universally recognized and loved by many generations of his students. Ivan Yakovlevich is considered the creator of the modern Chuvash alphabet: he translated into the Chuvash language and published many books, for example, the poems “Poltava” by Alexander Pushkin and “A Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, the Young Oprichnik, and the Valorous Merchant Kalashnikov” by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov.