Joseph Stalin is known today as the dictator of the Soviet Union who within his lands ordered
the executions of thousands.
Stalin ordered a number of purges which led to hundreds of thousands of people being murdered
and killed, and many being sent to the gulags, the horrific system of labour camps set up
across the Union.
One man who rose to prominence within Stalin’s regime was Genrikh Yagoda, who was appointed
as the director of the NKVD, the secret security and intelligence agency.
Yagoda was incredibly powerful, and be oversaw a huge number of executions and the events
of the Great Purge.
However like so many he himself fell from grace.
So join us today as we look at, ‘The BRUTAL execution of Genrikh Yagoda, Stalin’s Chief
of Police.
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Genrikh Yagoda was born into a Jewish family in November 1891.
His father was a jeweller and from a young age he began to involve himself in revolutionary
actions.
He claimed as young as 14 he was working in underground printing press’ and also was
a member of a fighting squad.
Yagoda joined the Bolsheviks in Nizhny Novgorod around the age of 16 and was quickly arrested
and exiled, but in 1913 he had moved to St Petersburg and was working inside of the steel
works.
As the First World War broke out and the Russians became involved, Yagoda joined the cause fighting
for his country, and enrolled in the army, but was later wounded whilst seeing action.
His early career as a revolutionary who sought to go against the government may have been
embellished to impress, but following the October Revolution of 1917, he rose to prominence
inside of the Cheka.
The Cheka was the Soviet Secret Police that came before the NKVD, and Yagoda was seen
as a promising member of the force.
He became the second deputy to Felix Dzerzhinsky the Head of the Cheka, and later became the
deputy chief of the State Political Directorate the OGPU.
In these roles, he would be seen as competent, and he began to rub shoulders with the leaders
of the Soviet Union.
He was described as a ‘spare, slightly tanned, trim looking youngish officer,’ who was
difficult to link to terror due to his affable and modest personality.
He was seen as a pleasant young man, who many could not believe was linked to the brutality
and execution, and also torture of the Cheka.
It was said though as time went on he did change in his appearance and manner as he
gained more power.
Yagoda had known Stalin for a long whilst, since 1918 where they fought during the Civil
War, but it’s believed that he did oppose Stalin on a number of different ideas and
policies which may have driven a wedge between the two at times.
He continued in his duties, and was involved in executions of high ranking and well known
soviet figures.
As the deputy head of the OGPU, Yagoda was involved in organising construction works
of the White Sea baltic canal using forced labour, and it was noted how the use of slave
labour to complete this job led to a huge loss of life, even if it was completed immensely
quickly.
He also began work on the Moscow Volga Canal, which was later finished off by Nikolai Yezhov.
Yagoda in his role also expanded the use of prison labour, and was even part of a group
that founded a secret poison laboratory that was practically gifted to Stalin to use against
any of his enemies.
This meant that Stalin through the factory had the means of eradicating any of his dissenters
using poison, in crafty and underhand means.
It’s believed that upon the orders of Stalin that Yagoda drugged the former NKVD boss Menzhinsky.
Two months following Menzhinsky’s suspicious death, Stalin appointed Yagoda as the People’s
Commissar for Internal Affairs, which meant he was acting now as the Chief of the NKVD,
the Secret Police.
He was the one who was involved in ordering high profile investigations, executions and
overseeing the work which was often very bloody of the group.
The NKVD’s legacy is most remembered for their torture and killing, including when
they carried out the Great Purge.
The Great Purge was the campaign launched by Stalin against his own people where he
ordered that any dissent or suspicion of dissent would be put down brutally.
The NKVD carried this out, and it’s estimated that between 700,000 and 1.2 million people
were executed in the massacres and ethnic cleansing of the Purge.
It was under Yagoda’s leadership that the NKVD began the Great Purge, but it would reach
its peak later under the leadership of Yezhov.
All aspects of Soviet society were targeted including the Red Army, and this military
body would even be negatively affected by it and weakened when the Second World War
Broke out.
The GULAGs were expanded greatly under Yagoda’s command, and thousands of people found themselves
transported to the brutal prison camps often hundreds of miles from their homes.
But Stalin was growing frustrated with his chief of the NKVD.
Those who came into this position often left the role in brutal fashion and in bloodshed.
Yagoda had been criticised and his public opinion with regards to show trials had led
to the public looking unfavourably on him and the NKVD, and this report even generated
sympathy for those who were executed, criticising Stalin.
Stalin was unhappy with Yagoda for a number of reasons, he saw the assassination of Sergei
Kirov as mishandled, and he began to not trust him at all.
Yagoda did not report the existence of the Bloc of Oppositions too, an alliance that
existed between oppositionists within the Soviet Union and Leon Trotsky.
Stalin later wrote, ‘Yagoda has obviously proved unequal to the task of exposing the
Trotskyite-Zinovievite Bloc.’
The following day after this letter was sent, on the 26th September 1936, Yagoda was relieved
of his command of the NKVD and was replaced by Yezhov.
There was some belief that the opposition to Stalin could have been working with Yagoda,
and it was said ‘He was removed from the NKVD, and we lost our strong link in our opposition
intelligence service.
The NKVD headed by Yezhov took another step forward.’
Genrikh Yagoda had lost everything and in March 1937 he was arrested after Stalin ordered
his capture.
Yezhov accused Yagoda of smuggling diamonds, and of corruption and working as a German
spy and agent since he joined the Communists decades before.
It was even claimed that Yegoda tried to assassinate Yezhov, by leaving bits of mercury around
his office, but it’s likely that Yezhov was justifiying the trial and subsequent execution
that would take place.
He was also accused of poisoning Maxim Gorky and his son, and also it was found that his
apartments and dacha contained a number of illicit items, explicit items and also works
written by Trotsky.
At trial he was found guilty of treason and also conspiracy against Stalin and the Soviet
Government.
It was clear what the verdict would be and the public criticism of Yagoda only meant
one thing that he would be sentenced to death.
He claimed he was not a spy, and he did expect to receive clemency from Stalin.
Some would say he was confident in his mannerisms at trial as he knew Stalin would spare him,
but this would never come.
Shortly after the trial was finished, the death sentence against Genrikh Yagoda was
carried out.
It’s believed that he was dragged out of the courtroom, and within minutes had been
taken to an execution chamber, where he was then shot dead a short while after the fact
he had been declared guilty.
The soviets did not tend to wait when it came to killing high profile political targets
and those deemed enemies.
This would be the same course of action taken against Yagoda’s successors, Yezhov and
then Lavrentiy Beria.
The Chief of the NKVD position usually led to one thing, the shooting of that person
in the position of power.
He would have been shot by a sole executioner, or by a firing squad shortly after the sentence
of death would have been repeated.
It has been said that before his execution to add insult to injury, Yezhov ordered that
Yagoda should be stripped naked and also beaten.
This was done to shame him just before his execution and to humiliate him.
It’s not known what happened to his remains after the execution, and it’s considered
that high profile Chief Executioner for the NKVD Vasili Blokhin may have been the one
to take the life of Yagoda.
Along with his shooting, it’s believed that 3000 supporters of Yagoda inside of the NKVD
were also shot and killed.
50 years after the trial of Yagoda and the others, all of the other 20 defendants were
pardoned and cleared of charges except for Yagoda.
He is seen in History as the man who began to carry out the wishes of the Stalin by starting
the Great Purge, but ultimately he would be one of those close to the leadership of the
Soviet Union who would also suffer.
Stalin believed Yagoda had failed, and he saw Yezhov as the man who would carry out
the dirty and brutal work of the NKVD with utmost efficiency and without any questions
asked.
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