The Secret Police in Soviet Russia
- Created by: Alex2017
- Created on: 24-04-17 19:09
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- The Secret Police
- Yagoda
- head of secret police in 1934-1938
- Rapid expansion of Gulags
- For a vast system of forced labour to improve the economy
- Oversaw the completion of the White Sea Canal
- Completed under budget in les than 2 years
- Cost at least 10,000 lives
- Only dug to depth of 12 feet making it useless
- Influence increased under the Great Purges
- 1936 -accused of being incompetent in safeguarding Kirov
- Removed from office and shot in 1938
- Yezhov
- Head in 1936
- enthusiam for personally torturing suspects
- Most excessive stage of the Great Purges
- 1938- stalin concerned that heavy use of terror was demoralising the population
- Reforms
- process of arrest, trial and imprisonment sped up
- Inmates of Gulags rose as Yezhov believed they were underused
- Executioners were awarded medals
- Targets for executions set
- surveillance of general public
- Had members of the NKVD purged and executed
- Dissmissed as he was blamed for the purges
- Beria
- Head in 1938
- Removed and killed during the Leadership struggle
- Highly organised
- Seen as relief to public, would reform the NKVD
- Reintroduced more convential methods of police procedure
- Arrests only where evidence was found
- Oversaw Trotsky's Murder 1940
- 1939- increase gulag food rations to get the most work out of the prisoners
- scientist put to work on many different projects
- developed space programme
- Head in 1938
- WW2
- 1941- NKVD responsiblity for supervision of Red Army
- Control over deportations and forcible removals
- 1943- Beria set up special departments to root out traitors
- Soviet Troops who were captured were considered suspect- automatically held in detention camps
- Some were used to clear minefields by walking through them
- Soviet Troops who were captured were considered suspect- automatically held in detention camps
- Katyn Massacre 1923 -murder of 4,000 polish soldiers
- Responsiblilty
- Stalin
- Personally signed death warants
- GAve NKVD targets to meet
- slave labour for sucess of 5 year plans
- reflection of paranoid personality
- stemmed from anti-semetic views
- Heads of secret police
- had sadistic tendecies
- Took opportunities to add to death toll
- Yezhov -terror sped up
- Expansion of the gulag
- "Stalin selected the victims- and his subordinates leaped at the opportunity to obey him"
- Stalin
- Opponents
- 1936 show trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev
- Purges of the right (Bukarin)
- Members of the red army who were accused of working with foreign countries
- Dzerzhinsky
- Lenin Established Checka in 1917
- Red terror 1921-22
- Able to act within minimal interference from the law
- The Lubyanka Building was the official headquarters
- Where prisoners were taken to be tortured
- The Lubyanka Building was the official headquarters
- Head of secret police 1917-34
- Cheka renamed GPU in 1922 then OGPU in 1923
- Lenin Established Checka in 1917
- Red terror 1921-22
- Lenin Established Checka in 1917
- Lenin Established Checka in 1917
- Post war
- Mingrelain Affair 1951
- Purge of party in Georgia which targeted people of Mingrelian ethnicity (Beria belonged)
- Doctor's Plot
- Jan 1953 -Stalin accused Jewish doctors of trying to kill him
- stemmed from anti-semetic views
- Ironically Stalin died because these doctors were scared that if they saved him, he would have them killed
- Jan 1953 -Stalin accused Jewish doctors of trying to kill him
- Mingrelain Affair 1951
- Yagoda
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