Background
Iagoda, Genrikh was born in 1891.
Iagoda, Genrikh was born in 1891.
Active revolutionary from 1904. Exiled in 1911-1913. For a short time worked as a statistician, later in the medical insurance office of the Putilov Works in Petrograd. On military service in 1915.
After the October Revolution, held various military posts, 1917-1919. Senior member of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, 1919-1922. From 1920, one of the chiefs of the Cheka.
Deputy chairman of the GPU in 1924. Commissar for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in 1934-July 36. Financed Soviet spyrings by forged dollars printed in the USSR. Stalin’s chief executor during the early part of the party purges.
On Stalin’s orders, replaced by Ezhov and arrested. One of the chief defendants at the show trial of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyists in 1937. Executed at Lubianka prison.
A huge statue of him at the entrance to the BelomorBaltiiskii canal, built by slave labour, was dynamited together with the rock on which it stood.