Genrikh Yagoda: Soviet Secret Police Chief and Gulag Architect Executed in Stalin’s Purge

World History: True Stories of the 20th Century · Mar 25, 2026 · 16m

Genrikh Yagoda, head of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, and architect of the Gulag system, rose from a poor Jewish family in the Russian Empire to become one of the most powerful and feared men in the Soviet Union—and ultimately a victim of the very terror he helped build. Born in 1891 in Rybinsk, Yagoda grew up in a household shaped by underground revolutionary activity: his father, a jeweler, forged passports for anti-Tsarist activists. Drawn into radical politics at a young age, Yagoda joined anarcho-communist circles before being arrested for carrying a forged passport and exiled, an…