Leonid Mikhailovich Zakovsky - a well-known member of the Soviet state security agencies. He held the position of Commissioner of State Security of the first rank. He was a member of a special troika of the NKVD of the USSR. In this article, we'll cover the rise and fall of his career.
Early years
Leonid Mikhailovich Zakovsky was born on the territory of the Courland province in 1894. He was Latvian by nationality. In fact, his birth name was Heinrich Ernestovich Stubis.
After graduating from two classes of the city school, he was expelled, being seen at an anti-government demonstration on May 1. Went to work in copper-tin workshops. Since 1912, he sailed on the steamship "Kursk" as a stoker. From 1914 he was a member of the Social Democratic Labor Party.
Anti-government activities
The Tsarist secret police closely followed Leonid Zakovsky. In 1913, he was arrested along with his brother Fritz, but three days later he was released under police supervision.
BNovember of the same year, he was again under arrest. He was held in the Libavskaya and Mitavskaya prisons. The surviving protocols mentioned that the prisoner belonged to a group of anarchists and was considered politically unreliable. However, he pleaded not guilty. At the beginning of 1914, the verdict was passed. L. M. Zakovsky was deported for three years under police supervision to the Olonets province.
He was in exile until January 1917. After that, Leonid Mikhailovich Zakovsky tried in every possible way not to advertise his participation in anarchist organizations. Moreover, in the documents he indicated that he had completed secondary education, which is not true.
Life in Petrograd
From exile, he came to Petrograd, where he settled, avoiding mobilization in every possible way. He was an active participant in revolutionary events.
After anti-government demonstrations in July 1917, he went underground. In October, together with a detachment of sailors, he took part in the capture of the telephone exchange. As a result, he became one of nine Latvians whose participation in the October Revolution was documented.
Security Careers
A couple of months after the October Revolution, he joined the Cheka. In March, he received the status of special envoy on the Southern, Western and Eastern fronts. He led special forces, which were called upon to suppress uprisings in Saratov, Astrakhan, Kazan and in some other areas.
Over time, LeonidMikhailovich Zakovsky began to lead the Special Department of the Caspian-Caucasian Front, the information department in the Special Department of the Moscow Extraordinary Commission.
In the period from 1921 to 1925, he headed the Odessa and Podolsk provincial departments of the GPU, was authorized by the State Political Administration for Moldova and Ukraine. Officially considered involved in the robberies and murders of defectors and the appropriation of contraband goods. All this provoked a conflict with the immediate Ukrainian leadership. He was brought to party responsibility, but he escaped any punishment, having received a promotion and a posting to Siberia.
Transfer to Siberia
Zakovsky's career in state security continued as a plenipotentiary representative for Siberia and head of the Special Department of the local military district. He arrived at his new duty station in 1926.
In 1928, he was responsible for the personal security of Joseph Stalin, when he arrived on a working trip to Siberia. It is considered one of the organizers of collectivization in these places. Through the OGPU, he was responsible for the dispossession of prosperous Siberian peasants.
In 1930, he led government forces in the confrontation with the participants of the Muromtsev uprising. The following year, he took the initiative to send 40,000 peasant families. His idea was approved by senior management. Later, specific measures were developed to organize resettlement. In 1933, another deportation took place, during which another 30,000 families were deported.
He was one of the initiators of the creation of the camp system in the Soviet Union, known as the Gulag. In 1928, as chairman, he headed the troika for the Siberian Territory, created for out-of-court consideration of cases. In just two months at the end of 1929 - beginning of 1930, he received and processed 156 cases. Nearly a thousand people were convicted of them, 347 of them were sentenced to death.
During 1930, another 16,5 thousand people were convicted by the troika. Nearly 5,000 of them received death sentences. The rest were sent to camps and exile. Zakovsky himself issued instructions to the officers of the commandant's office, ordering the execution of convicts.
In the spring of 1932 he was transferred to Belarus to the same positions. Two years later he became People's Commissar of Internal Affairs in the Belarusian Republic. He is responsible for a high-profile fabricated case of a spy and rebel group.
Terror in two capitals
At the end of 1934, Zakovsky's career in the NKVD went up under Heinrich Yagoda. He was appointed head of the Leningrad Department of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.
Investigated the murder of Kirov. In 1935, together with the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee Andrei Zhdanov, he launched mass terror in the city on the Neva. Within a month, under his command, an operation was carried out to evict the so-called "former people." Almost 12 thousand former manufacturers, nobles, landowners, priests and officers were among them.
At this time, he actively participated in the Stalinist repressions, again he was part of a special trio. documentedit is known that Zakovsky personally participated in torture, interrogations and executions.
Work in Moscow
At the end of 1937 he became a deputy of the Supreme Council from the Leningrad Region. Soon he received a transfer to Moscow to the post of Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. At the same time, he led the capital's department of the NKVD. He stayed in this post for only two months, but it was on these days that the peak of repressions in the city fell. From February 20 to March 28, when Zakovsky was in charge of the Moscow NKVD, the most massive executions of political prisoners were carried out.
Contemporaries say that at that time, charges were made against entire families. Death sentences were passed even on minors and pregnant women. Zakovsky created a plan to detain at least one thousand "nationals" per month.
In February 1938, he took the initiative to review the sentences against those who were partially fit for work and disabled, who were on the territory of Moscow and the Moscow region. Zakovsky believed that these convicts should be sentenced to death.
He was among the organizers of the so-called Third Moscow Trial. This is the latest in a high-profile public trial of a group of former party and government officials.
Arrest and death
In March 1938, Zakovsky himself became a victim of Stalin's repressions. He was removed from the post of head of the Moscow Department of the NKVD, transferred to the post of head of the trustKamlesosplav. But a month later he lost this job as well, and was completely dismissed from the NKVD. He was accused of organizing a nationalist Latvian group in the NKVD, as well as spying for Poland, Germany and England.
Zakovsky was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on August 29, 1938. After debunking the personality cult, he was not rehabilitated.
He is mentioned in a letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party to the party leadership, in which it was noted that the installation of measures of physical influence gave positive results, but they were fouled by some workers of the NKVD. Zakovsky is mentioned among them.
