Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Yagoda was a prominent figure in Soviet history, serving as the head of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, from 1934 to 1936. Born into a Jewish family in Nizhniy Novgorod, Yagoda began his political career as a member of the Bolshevik Party in 1907 and quickly ascended within the ranks of the Cheka, the precursor to the NKVD. His rise to power was marked by his involvement in significant political purges and the infamous Moscow Trials, where he played a key role in orchestrating show trials that targeted perceived enemies of the state. Despite his initial loyalty to Joseph Stalin, Yagoda fell out of favor due to his slow implementation of purges and was ultimately arrested and condemned to death in 1938, just two days after his sentencing. His execution serves as a stark reminder of the brutal nature of Stalin's regime and the perilous nature of political power during that era. Yagoda's legacy is complicated; he was both an architect of state terror and a victim of the very system he helped create, ultimately buried in an unmarked grave alongside many of his victims.
Subject Terms
Genrikh Yagoda
Soviet secret police chief
- Born: 1891
- Birthplace: Lodz, Poland, Russian Empire (now in Poland)
- Died: March 15, 1938
- Place of death: Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia)
Cause of notoriety: During the Soviet Great Terror, Yagoda oversaw the first two Moscow Trials and the subsequent deaths of political figures and other, lesser-known Soviet citizens. Joseph Stalin ultimately charged Yagoda with poisoning Soviet leaders and had him tried in the third Moscow Trial; Yagoda was found guilty.
Active: 1922-1938
Locale: Former Soviet Union, particularly Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg)
Sentence: Death
Early Life
Genrikh Yagoda (GEHN-rihk yah-GOH-dah) was the son of a Jewish jeweler who moved to Nizhniy Novgorod early in the son’s life, and there is evidence that the family’s original name was Yehuda (Judah) before it was changed to the more Russian-sounding “Yagoda,” which means “berry” in Russian. Yagoda studied to be a pharmacist, and in 1907 he became a member of the Bolsheviks, a socialist political faction.
In personal appearance, Yagoda was short and balding, with devious eyes behind thick glasses. Perhaps because of his small stature and unimpressive appearance, he always insisted on appearing in public in full uniform and designed impressive uniforms for the Soviet secret police. As his career progressed, he became increasingly debauched in his personal life and amassed a substantial collection of women’s lingerie and sex toys. He also was fascinated with horticulture and claimed that he had more than one thousand orchids and roses at his dacha, or country house.
During the early years of the Soviet Union, Yagoda was associated with the group that would ultimately be condemned by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin as the “right deviationist” wing of the Bolshevik Party. In particular, Yagoda was a close friend of Yakov Sverdlov, the first Soviet head of state, with whom Stalin had quarreled.
Political Career
Although Yagoda had held a variety of positions in the Bolshevik Party from the beginning of the Bolshevik regime in 1917, his true rise to power began at the close of the Russian Civil War (1918-1922). By this time, he had risen to the upper echelons of the Cheka, the earliest form of the Soviet secret police. On June 6, 1921, Cheka chief Felix Dzerzhinsky recommended him as a deputy to Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, an important section head. In this position, Yagoda worked consistently to solidify his own position, appointing friends and associates to significant positions. However, he made several serious mistakes, including allowing the head of the old czarist secret police, Alexei Lopukhin, to escape to France. This and other defections annoyed Stalin, who disliked anything that signified a possible loss of control.
When Dzerzhinsky died in 1926, Menzhinsky succeeded to his position, and Yagoda was put in line to take the top position in turn. That opportunity came in 1934 upon Menzhinsky’s death. Yagoda was put in charge of the Soviet secret police when Leningrad party secretary Sergei Kirov was shot on December 1, 1934. Historians have long debated the exact extent to which Stalin was involved in the assassination of his friend and rival. It is known that the secret police units guarding Leningrad’s party headquarters were aware of Kirov’s assassin, Leonid Nikolaev, and even briefly detained him.
Moscow Trials
Stalin ordered Yagoda to search out and destroy all the people who were responsible for Kirov’s death. That Nikolaev had acted alone on an unhealthy obsession was not an acceptable answer, and Stalin soon provided specific names of enemies who were to be linked to the murder as a part of a grand conspiracy, led from abroad by his hated rival Leon Trotsky. Yagoda became one of the principal organizers of the first two of the infamous Moscow Trials—parodies of justice with predetermined verdicts against Soviet officials, which nonetheless thoroughly convinced many Western observers, who praised the trials as exemplary. In addition, Yagoda saw to the arrests and secret trials of thousands of other, lesser figures.
However, Stalin soon grew dissatisfied with Yagoda for developing the purges too slowly and for failing to look within his own organization for possible counterrevolutionaries and foreign agents. In an example of the dictator’s twisted sense of humor, he had Yagoda not only dismissed but also arrested and made him one of the defendants at the third and final Moscow Trial. Yagoda was accused of having poisoned various Soviet leaders, a charge that was not entirely false. There is evidence that Stalin used Yagoda’s knowledge of chemistry and poisons to eliminate various rivals who could not be discredited and publicly destroyed. On March 13, 1938, Yagoda was condemned to death, and the sentence was duly carried out a mere two days later.
Impact
Genrikh Yagoda was instrumental in creating the apparatus of Soviet state terror and setting it into motion at the beginning of the Great Terror. However, he underestimated the sheer extent of Stalin’s ambition to destroy all enemies, real and possible. As a result, Yagoda was, in the end, consumed by the monster he had created. Rather than being interred in the Kremlin Wall as had been his two predecessors, his ashes were thrown into an unmarked grave along with uncounted numbers of his own victims.
Bibliography
Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. A post-glasnost reissuing of the most authoritative volume on the era.
Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Includes information on Stalin’s use of Yagoda and other henchmen to run the Terror while deflecting attention from himself.
Rayfield, Donald. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. New York: Random House, 2004. A study of the relationship between Stalin and his chief henchmen.
Rogovin, Vadim Z. 1937: Stalin’s Year of Terror. Translated by by Frederick S. Choate. Oak Park, Mich.: Mehring Books, 1998. A Trotskyist perspective on the Great Terror.
Vaksberg, Arkady. Stalin’s Prosecutor: The Life of Andrei Vyshinsky. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990. Includes information on Yagoda’s role in the Moscow Trials as related to that of Vyshinsky.