Boris Rodos: Soviet Secret Police Torturer Executed After Stalin’s Death

World History: True Stories of the 20th Century · Apr 30, 2026 · 13m

Boris Rodos was one of the most feared torturers of Stalin’s Soviet secret police, later executed for extracting false confessions through brutality. Boris Veniaminovich Rodos rose from an unimpressive provincial life to become one of the most sadistic interrogators in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Born on 22 June 1905 in Melitopol to a Jewish tailor, Rodos drifted through odd jobs—packer, cigarette seller, office clerk—and was expelled from the Komsomol in 1930 for attempted rape. Yet one year later he entered the Communist Party and soon after joined the OGPU, the predecessor to the NKVD. What…