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See all related content →. Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda, Yagoda also spelled Jagoda, (born 1891, Łodz, Pol., Russian Empire—died March 15, 1938, Moscow), head of the Soviet secret police under Stalin from 1934 to 1936 and a central figure in the purge trials. Yagoda joined the Bolsheviks in 1907 and became a member of the presidium of the ...

The Great Purge began under NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda but reached its peak between September 1936 and August 1938 under the leadership of Nikolai Yezhov, hence the name Yezhovshchina. The campaigns were carried out according to the general line of the party , often by direct orders of the politburo headed by Stalin.

The trials were the public aspect of the widespread purge that sent millions of alleged “enemies of the people” to prison camps in the 1930s. The first trial opened in August 1936, while Genrikh G. Yagoda was head of the secret police.

It was led by Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, and Lavrentiy Beria. The NKVD undertook mass extrajudicial executions of citizens, and conceived, populated and administered the Gulag system of forced labour camps. Their agents were responsible for the repression of the wealthier peasantry.

Secret police head Genrikh Yagoda and Matvei Berman, head of the GULAG system, dreamed up a brutal social-engineering project aimed at "resettling" at least 2 million people in the remote reaches ...

YAGODA, GENRIKH GRIGOREVICH. (1891 – 1938), state security official, general commissar of state security (1935). Genrikh Grigorevich Yagoda was a native of Rybinsk, the son of an artisan and the second cousin of the revolutionary leader Yakov Sverdlov, to whose niece he was married.

Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda was a Soviet secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised arrests, show trials, and executions of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, climactic events of the Great Purge.

Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (b. 1891) Quick Reference (b. Lódź in Russian Poland, 1891; d. Moscow, 15 Mar. 1938) Chairman of the NKVD 1934–6 Yagoda was the son of a Jewish carpenter. After secondary education he became a statistician. He worked for the father of Sverdlov and married into the Sverdlov family.