Yan Poluyan [real name: Yakov] was born in the Kuban into a Cossack family. He studied at the gymnasium in Anapa, and at Kyiv University (did not graduate). Poluyan participated in the events of the revolution of 1905–1907 in Yekaterinodar. Since 1912, he was a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a Bolshevik. January 1915 saw him arrested for revolutionary activities and sentenced to 5 years in hard labor, which he served until 1917.

After the February Revolution of 1917, he returned to Yekaterinodar. In 1917 he was Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Yekaterinodar Soviet, a member of the Yekaterinodar Committee of the RSDLP(b). In January 1918, he was elected Chairman of the Kuban Regional Revolutionary Committee. In February, he held a congress of Soviets of the Kuban region in Armavir, which outlawed the regional Rada of the Kuban People’s Republic. As Chairman of the Executive Committee of the regional Soviet, Poluyan began to implement the policy of the Soviet government in the Kuban. He took part in building the South-Eastern Revolutionary Army. In March 1918, Poluyan’s government moved to Yekaterinodar.

In April–May 1918, he was Chairman of the Central Executive Committee and Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Kuban Soviet Republic within the Russian SFSR. At this time, the Volunteer Army led by Lavr Kornilov during the Ice March (First Kuban campaign) tried to seize the Kuban area but was defeated. After the unification of the Kuban and Black Sea Soviet republics at the end of May, Poluyan became Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Kuban-Black Sea Soviet Republic.

June 1918 saw the start of the Second Kuban campaign of the Volunteer Army led by Anton Denikin. The Kuban-Black Sea Republic became part of the North Caucasian Soviet Socialist Republic. Poluyan became a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Republic, headed the Revolutionary Military Council of the Red Army of the North Caucasus (since October 1918, the 11th Army). He was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 9th (Kuban) Army, Head of the political department of the South-Eastern and Caucasian Fronts. After the restoration of Soviet power in the region, he became a member of the North Caucasian Revolutionary Committee as Grigory Ordzhonikidze’s deputy (March–June 1920).

His subsequent career included the following posts: in 1920–1922, Chairman of the Kuban-Black Sea Revolutionary Committee and the Regional Executive Committee, a member of the Kuban-Black Sea Regional Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) – RCP(b), a member of the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) (since 1924, South-Eastern Bureau of the Central Committee), since 1922, Chairman of Tver (Kalinin) Governorate’s Executive Committee. A delegate to the 10th Party Congress (1921). Since 1918, a member of the All-Union Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), from 1922 to 1931, a member of the USSR Central Executive Committee. In 1929–1930, Chairman of the Far Eastern Regional Executive Committee. In 1931–1937, Head of the Energy Department of the People’s Commissariat of Public Utilities of the Russian SFSR. July 26, 1937, saw him arrested. On October 8, 1937, he was sentenced to capital punishment and shot on the same day. Poluyan was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.