Genrikh Yagoda

Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda , born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda was a Soviet secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Unions security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised the arrest, show trial, and execution of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, events that initiated the Great Purge. Yagoda also supervised the construction of the White SeaBaltic Canal with Naftaly Frenkel, using slave labor from the GULAG system, during which many laborers died.

Yagoda was born in Rybinsk into a Jewish family. He joined the Bolshevik movement in the summer of 1917. Contrary to the rumors invented by himself, Yagoda was never a pharmacist but in fact an apprentice engraver in the workshop of the father of Yakov Sverdlov, a prominent Bolshevik leader. Yagoda subsequently married Sverdlovs niece Ida Averbakh, which permitted him, after the October Revolution of 1917, to be promoted through the ranks of the Cheka to become the second deputy of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, in September 1923. After Dzerzhinskys appointment as chairman of the Supreme Council of National Economy in January 1924, Yagoda became the real manager of the State Political Directorate, as the deputy chairman Vyacheslav Menzhinsky had little authority because of his serious illness. The troika Grigory ZinovievLev KamenevJoseph Stalin wanted a symbolic direction represented by Felix Dzerzhinsky and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky and an effective direction represented by Ya

Source: Wikipedia