Genrikh Lyushkov—described as “stout, black-haired, black-eyed, with a Charlie Chaplin mustache and a strongly Jewish cast of countenance”—was among the small number of NKVD bigwigs to enjoy an audience in the Little Corner during the terror.155 Born in Odessa in 1900, the son of a Jewish tailor, he had joined the Cheka in 1920, learned good German, and conducted industrial espionage in Germany. He was also one of the few top Chekists with a higher degree in jurisprudence. He was, however, not a star (one colleague in Moscow recalled “a modest person and decent functionary”) and had no major awards.156 But in December 1934, in the wake of the Kirov assassination, Lyushkov, as deputy chief of the NKVD’s secret-political department in Moscow, had arrived with Stalin’s entourage in Leningrad and participated in the “interrogations,” catching the eye of Yezhov (then still in the party apparatus). In August 1936, Yagoda had appointed Lyushkov NKVD boss of the Azov–Black Sea territory to produce compromising material on the party boss (and Yagoda nemesis) there, Yevdokimov. In September, Yagoda was cashiered. All the same, Lyushkov went on a murderous rampage of trumped-up charges against the Yevdokimov clan, gaining a reputation with underlings as an arrogant bully. Frinovsky and Yezhov tried to rein him in, but Lyushkov had instructions directly from Stalin.157
During the flurry of prizes for those prosecuting the terror, on July 3, 1937, Lyushkov received the Order of Lenin.158 He was transferred out of Rostov to take up the big terror assignment in the Soviet Far East that had been given (a few weeks earlier) to Balytsky.159 On July 28, Lyushkov had a fifteen-minute audience in the Little Corner, and three days later he set out by train for Khabarovsk with a heavy entourage, arriving August 9.160 He boasted in telegrams to Moscow about one unmasked “plot” after another; Stalin devoured the interrogation protocols, especially after Terenty Deribas (Balytsky’s long-serving predecessor) was denounced for embezzling gold in a machination during which an NKVD officer fell under a train. (Stalin: “To Yezhov. Important. It’s possible that Deribas, beyond everything already, was a serious ordinary criminal. This must be investigated.”)161 It was Lyushkov, in late summer–fall 1937, who conducted the deportation of some 170,000 Soviet Koreans;
Lyushkov was just beginning. Between December 1937 and May 1938, he imprisoned or deported 19,000 of the 25,000 ethnic Chinese in the Soviet Far East, including every last one in Vladivostok.164 As a result of his “vigilance,” he had to beg for translators in Asian languages, requesting the transfer to the NKVD of eight students by name from Far Eastern University.165 He also begged Moscow for new operatives: thirty-seven NKVD officers were locked up in the local prison as foreign “spies.” But Lyushkov had problems far bigger than lack of personnel: he had served in the organs under Yagoda. Of the forty-one NKVD officers under Yagoda who had held the title of commissar of state security (first, second, or third rank)—equivalent to general—only ten, including Lyushkov, remained alive and at liberty. One (Slutsky) had been poisoned, three had committed suicide, and the rest had been arrested and for the most part executed.166 Lyushkov, in the capital for the January 1938 Supreme Soviet convocation, complained to Frinovsky that he was being tailed upon exiting his Moscow hotel. Frinovsky replied that Yezhov was just trying to safeguard him, which was true. The arrested Georgian Lordkipanidze had incriminated Lyushkov.
Instead of passing the Lordkipanidze interrogation protocols to Stalin, Yezhov had had Frinovsky reinterrogate Yagoda. The latter complied: Lyushkov had not been part of the “plot.” Testimony against Lyushkov kept coming, however, and Frinovsky pressured Yezhov, asking why they were protecting this “Yagodaite,” especially since, on the inside, people already knew of the “testimony” accumulated against him. Yezhov was in a bind. If Lyushkov were belatedly arrested, Yezhov would have to explain to Stalin why he had failed to forward the interrogation protocols earlier. Nonetheless, the pressure against Lyushkov built, and on April 16, 1938, Frinovsky ordered Lyushkov to send his deputy, Moisei Kagan, to Moscow, ostensibly to be assigned to another post. Lyushkov had secretly agreed with Kagan that the latter, upon arrival, would let him know everything was okay. Lyushkov heard nothing. (Kagan was arrested.)167