Genrikh Yagoda

Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda (Генрих Григорьевич Ягода) (1891 - March 15, 1938) was a head of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD (1934 - 1936).

He was born in Lodz, Poland, and joined the Bolsheviks in 1907. After the October Revolution of 1917, he rose through the ranks of the Cheka (the NKVD's predecessor) and became People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, or head of the secret police, in 1934. Yagoda oversaw the first phase of the Great Purge in late 1936, but was replaced shortly thereafter by Nikolai Yezhov.

Yagoda was subsequently arrested and, in the Trial of the Twenty One, found guilty of treason and conspiring against the government of Joseph Stalin; he was executed in Moscow in 1938.