Genrikh Yagoda was the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR in 1934-1936. He became one of the "founding fathers" of the Stalinist Gulag and the organizer of the mass repressions of that period. During the years of the Great Terror, he himself was among the victims of the NKVD. Yagoda was accused of espionage and preparing a coup d'état and was eventually shot.
Early years
Heinrich Yagoda came from Polish Jews. His real name is Enoch Gershevich Yehuda. The revolutionary was born on November 19, 1891 in Rybinsk, a city located in the Yaroslavl province. A few months after the birth of the child, the family moved to Nizhny Novgorod.
Yagoda Genrikh Grigoryevich was a relative of another famous Bolshevik, Yakov Sverdlov, being his second cousin. Their fathers worked as printers and made seals and stamps that the revolutionaries used to forge documents. Henry had five sisters and two brothers. His family lived in poverty. Nevertheless, the boy (after another move) graduated from the Simbirsk gymnasium.
In the printing house of Yagoda-Sverdlov there were Bolsheviks of various calibers. For example, Nikolai Semashko, the future Lenin People's Commissar of He alth, went there. Nizhny Novgorod was also the birthplace of Maxim Gorky (they became friends with Heinrich the day beforerevolution).
Owl
The key event, after which the boy's life changed dramatically, was the murder of his older brother Mikhail. In this sense, Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda was like Lenin. Mikhail was hacked to death by the Cossacks during the 1905 revolution. A sad fate awaited another brother, Leo. He was drafted into Kolchak's army, and in 1919 he was shot for participating in the uprising in his regiment. But it was the death of Mikhail, who accidentally ended up on the barricades, that made Heinrich a revolutionary.
Growing up, Yagoda, as an anarchist-communist, began to participate in illegal revolutionary activities. The royal gendarmes nicknamed him "Owl" and "Lonely" (for a hunted and unsociable appearance).
In 1911, the revolutionary arrived in Moscow. On the instructions of his comrades, he had to establish contacts with local like-minded people and help organize a bank robbery. Inexperienced in conspiracy, the future People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, fell into the hands of the police. In a sense, he was lucky. Only false documents were found on the suspicious young man. As a Jew, having found himself without permission in Moscow, he violated the law on the Pale of Settlement. Yagoda was tried and sentenced to a two-year exile in Simbirsk.
In St. Petersburg
In 1913, in honor of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty in Russia, a broad political amnesty was announced. Thanks to her, Yagoda found himself free a little earlier than expected. The link to Simbirsk ended, and the revolutionary had already legally moved to St. Petersburg. ForAfter that, he formally renounced Judaism and converted to Orthodoxy (the Pale of Settlement operated on a confessional, not a national basis).
Yagoda Genrikh Grigoryevich and religion had nothing in common. Nevertheless, according to the law, he did not have the right to be considered an atheist, and only for this reason he moved into the bosom of the Orthodox Church.
In St. Petersburg, Yagoda met Nikolai Podvoisky, who after the revolution became the first people's commissar of the armed forces. Thanks to his help, the revolutionary began to work in the insurance department at the Putilov factory. Podvoisky was also the brother-in-law of Chekists Arbuzov and Kedrov: he opened up a whole new world of possibilities for his protégé.
In 1915, Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda was drafted into the tsarist army, after which he went to the front of the First World War. He rose to the rank of corporal, but was wounded and soon demobilized. In 1916 Heinrich returned to Petrograd.
Revolution and Cheka
After the February Revolution, Yagoda worked for the newspapers Derevenskaya Poor and Soldatskaya Pravda. In the summer of 1917 he joined the Bolshevik Party. Later he will lie that he joined them back in 1907, but this fiction was refuted by the studies of historians.
During the October events, Yagoda was in the thick of things in Petrograd. In 1918 he began his career in the Cheka-OGPU. At first, the Chekist worked in the military inspectorate. Then a relative of Sverdlov and Dzerzhinsky transferred him to Moscow.
So Yagoda Genrikh Grigoryevich ended up in the Special Department. He was especially close to Vyacheslav Menzhinsky. WhenDzerzhinsky died, the latter headed the Cheka-OGPU, and Yagoda became his deputy. Moreover, with the onset of illness of the chief, the successful careerist began to actually manage the law enforcement agency.
Dubious earnings
Back in 1919-1920. Yagoda managed to work in the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade. There he established a profitable cooperation with the intelligence officer Alexander Lurie and began to earn commissions from foreign concessions. These two took away everything that lay badly. The fact was that the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade from its very foundation turned out to be closely connected with the Cheka. State security agencies confiscated valuables, and Lurie's department sold this stuff abroad for foreign currency.
Yagoda Genrikh Grigoryevich, whose biography speaks of him as a deeply greedy and greedy person, in this sense was noticeably different from the principled Dzerzhinsky and Menzhinsky. Stalin liked the corruption of the Chekist. When he was at the turn of the 20-30s. fought for sole power, he enlisted the support of Yagoda. Neither of them failed. Yagoda bet on a man who eventually became a dictator, and Stalin, knowing about Yagoda's fraudulent reputation, could now blackmail him, demanding loy alty.
Leader and People's Commissar
Despite the loy alty of the subordinate to the Soviet leader, their relationship can hardly be called ideal. In the late 1920s, Stalin was generally quite cold towards Yagoda, since Yakov Sverdlov provided patronage to him, and between Sverdlov and Stalin even an outsider since the time of the Turukkhanlinks felt a noticeable tension. The Chekist's papers to the boss were drawn up with caution, if not fear.
A serious problem for Yagoda after the establishment of Stalin's dictatorship was his old friendship with Bukharin. He even mentioned the head of the OGPU as the only Chekist who could be counted on in the fight against Stalin. At the same time, Yagoda was distinguished by irresistibility in the execution of orders, hard work and the behavior of an executioner who agreed to any crime. Stalin found another equally energetic and executive person in the NKVD only a few years later. It turned out to be Nikolai Yezhov. But in the early thirties, Stalin, of necessity, put up with Yagoda and arranged work with him.
Commissar of Internal Affairs
Yagoda lacked Menzhinsky's erudition and Dzerzhinsky's fanaticism. He himself once modestly called himself "a watchdog on a chain." In a friendly company during copious libations, he loved to clumsily recite poetry, but in his work he lacked creative talent. Yagoda's private letters were imbued with inexpressiveness and dryness. In the capital, he turned out to be an awkward provincial and always envied party leaders, who were more polished and liberated. But it was precisely such a person that Stalin put for some time in charge of the Chekists of the whole country.
In 1934, a new People's Commissariat of the NKVD was created, and the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Yagoda, also gained control of the Main Directorate of State Security. He led an even more expanded repressive state machine,which Stalin was preparing for new campaigns against opponents of his regime.
In his new capacity, Yagoda took up the creation and organization of the work of the Gulag. Within a short period of time, the Soviet Union was covered by a network of camps that became the most important part of the Stalinist economic system and one of the engines of forced industrialization. Under the direct supervision of the People's Commissar, the main Gulag construction of that time was carried out - the construction of the White Sea-B altic Canal. For correct coverage of events from an ideological point of view, Yagoda organized a trip there for Maxim Gorky. By the way, it was the People's Commissar who contributed to the writer's return to the USSR (before that, he had lived on the Italian island of Capri for several years).
Yagoda's relationship with the writing workshop did not end there. As the head of the political police, he, of course, monitored the loy alty of the creative intelligentsia to the authorities. In addition, Yagoda's wife was Ida Leonidovna Averbakh. Her brother Leopold was one of the most circulated critics and writers of his time. Ida and Heinrich had one son - also Heinrich (or Garik, as he was called in the family). The boy was born in 1929. The People's Commissar loved the company of writers, musicians and artists. They drank good alcohol, talked with beautiful women, that is, they led the lifestyle that the Chekist himself dreamed of.
Yagoda also had professional failures. For example, it was he who allowed the former head of the tsarist police, Lopukhin, to go to France. He became a defector. In the 20-30s the number of defectorsgrew steadily. Stalin literally every case infuriated. He reproached Yagoda for carelessness, even if the fugitive did not have any special knowledge and was an ordinary intellectual.
Danger approaching
In 1935, Yagoda received a new title, which had not been awarded to anyone before. He was now known as the "general commissioner of state security". Such an exclusive privilege became a sign of Stalin's special favor.
The Soviet leader needed the services of a dedicated head of the NKVD more than ever. In 1936, the first Moscow trial took place. Zinoviev and Kamenev, longtime associates of Stalin in the Bolshevik Party, were tried at this show trial.
Under the pressure of repression, other revolutionaries also fell, who at one time worked directly with Lenin and did not treat their persecutor as an indisputable authority. One of these people was Mikhail Tomsky. He did not wait for the trial and committed suicide. In a note sent to Stalin, he mentioned Yagoda in the sense that he also belonged to the party opposition, which was then being massacred. The Commissar was in mortal danger.
Arrest
In the autumn of 1936, Yagoda received a new appointment and became head of the People's Commissariat of Communications. The last blow against him was postponed. Opala turned into a long, agonizing wait. Although outwardly, the removal from the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs and appointment to another position seemed to look like an episode of a successful career, Yagoda could hardly have failed to understand whyeverything goes. Nevertheless, he did not dare to refuse Stalin and agreed to a new job.
The disgraced Chekist spent a little time in the People's Commissariat of Communications. Already at the beginning of 1937, he lost this post as well. Moreover, the unlucky people's commissar was expelled from her ranks by the CPSU (b). At the February plenum of the Central Committee, he was severely criticized for the failure of his department.
28 March Yagoda was arrested by his own recent subordinates. The attack on yesterday's celestial being deprived of power was led by the new People's Commissar of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov. These two, despite their own antagonism, have become figures of the same series for history. It was Yezhov and Yagoda who were the direct perpetrators of the large-scale Stalinist repressions of the 1930s.
During a search of the dismissed People's Commissar of Communications, banned Trotskyist literature was found. Soon there was an accusation of espionage, preparation of an assassination attempt on Stalin, planning a coup d'état. The investigation connected Yagoda with Trotsky, Rykov and Bukharin - the very people whose persecution he had recently actively contributed to. The conspiracy has been characterized as "Trotsky-fascist". Yagoda's longtime colleagues, Yakov Agranov, Semyon Firin, Leonid Zakovsky, Stanislav Redens, Fedor Eichmans, etc., joined the accusations. All of them characterized the person under investigation as an unworthy and limited person, and opposed him to the educated and principled Menzhinsky.
Yagoda's wife was also repressed. First of all, she was fired from her job in the prosecutor's office, and then arrested as a member of the family of an enemy of the people. I go Averbakh together withson and mother were exiled to Orenburg. Soon the woman was shot.
Among other things, Yagoda was accused of murdering Maxim Peshkov, the son of Maxim Gorky (in fact, he died of pneumonia). Allegedly, the massacre occurred for personal reasons. Yagoda really was in love with Nadezhda Peshkova, Maxim's widow. The secretary of the main Soviet writer Pyotr Kryuchkov was also accused of the murder.
Shooting
Yagoda's case became part of one common third Moscow trial (officially it was called the Trial of the anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites"). A public trial was held in the spring of 1938. It was accompanied by a major government propaganda campaign in the press. The newspapers published open letters from various public and ordinary people, in which they branded traitors to the Motherland, offering to shoot them “like mad dogs”, etc.
Yagoda asked (and the request was granted) that the issue of his relationship with Nadezhda Peshkova and the murder of Maxim Peshkov be considered separately at a closed meeting. The key episodes about espionage and treason were de alt with openly. Yagoda was interrogated by prosecutor and state prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky, the main character in the Moscow trials.
On March 13, 1938, the defendant was found guilty and sentenced to death. Clinging to life, Yagoda wrote a petition for pardon. It was rejected. On March 15, the former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs was shot. Unlike the other defendants in the trial, Yagoda was neverrehabilitated.
