97. Kaganovich had written to Stalin that “some of the apparatus, even though it has quieted down, will not be loyal to him [Yezhov] . . . There is talk that Yagoda remains general commissar [of state security], while Yezhov, they say, will not be given that rank and so on.” Khlevniuk et al., Stalin i Kaganovich, 683 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 95, l. 132), 701–2 (Oct. 12, 1936).
98. Conquest, Inside Stalin’s Secret Police, 13.
99. In April 1937, Yezhov and the new chief of the NKVD Special Department monitoring the army, Israel Leplyovsky, pressured Balytsky (his former superior) in Ukraine to uncover a gigantic military conspiracy there; Balytsky evidently complained to military district chief Iona Yakir on the telephone about this directive, an implicit warning to Yakir about the gathering danger. Leplyovsky, who had been chased from Ukraine in 1933, was returned to Ukraine, now as republic NKVD chief, on June 14, 1937, and carried out a pogrom against the republic NKVD. Tumshis, VChK: voina klanov, 391. Leplyovsky would be arrested on April 26, 1938, and shot in July.
100. One NKVD operative acknowledged Yagoda as a gifted organizer, but vainglorious. Shreider, NKVD iznutri, 17, 36. Another who had defected abroad judged Yagoda “an adventurist, murderer, and sadist.” Agabekov, ChK za rabotoi, 134, 178. “He was a pragmatic type, a do-er, lacking any foundation in ideas,” recalled Boris Gudz, an NKVD foreign intelligence station chief in Tokyo (who would survive the terror). “In his relations with subordinates, he sought the negative moments, in order to use these moments to pressure this or that subordinate.” http://www.fsb.ru/fsb/history/author/single.ht m!id%3D10318010@fsbPublication.html. Gudz was expelled from the party and kicked out of the secret police in April 1937, after the arrest of his sister. He got a job as a bus driver and worked his way up to director of the bus company. He would retire in 1962 and die in 2006, at age 104. His sister was married to Varlam Shalamov, who claimed that Gudz wrote the denunciation that got the writer arrested in Jan. 1937. http://shalamov.ru/library/27/#t10.
101. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 89–93 (TsA FSB, f. N-13614, t.2, l. 15–20).
102. On Yagoda’s relations with other NKVD personnel: http://tortuga.angarsk.su/fb2/abramv02/Evrei_v_KGB.fb2_4.html.
103. Il’inskii, Narkom Iagoda, 96.
104. Stefan Zweig’s German-language biography Joseph Fouché (1929) was translated into Russian in 1932 (Leningrad: Vremia). Vyshinsky would quote from the Zweig biography at Yagoda’s trial, equating the Soviet secret police chief with “the old, treacherous, double-dealing school of the political careerist and dishonest scoundrel . . . Joseph Fouché.” Protsess pravo-trotskistskogo bloka (Moscow: Iuridicheskoe izdatel’stvo, 1938), 610.
105. Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 135–44 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 302, l. 125–44).
106. Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, 139–40; Artizov et al., Reabilitatsiia: kak eto bylo, II: 674 (Ans Zalpeter); Khaustov et al., Lubianka: Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie, 135–44 (at 136: APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 302, l. 125–44).
107. Yezhov even went so far as to attack the sacred founder of the Cheka (“Yes, comrades, everyone must grasp that Felix Edmundovich Dzierżyński vacillated in 1925–1926”). Afanas’ev, Oni ne Molchali, 217 (this speech appears to have taken place in April). Mark Gai (Stokland) was arrested on April 1, and Pauker on April 19. Between April 22 and 25, Georgy Prokofyev and Gai, under torture, linked Yagoda to Tukhachevsky in the plot for a military palace coup. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 522.
108. Jansen and Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner, 60 (citing TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 4, d, 147, l. 34).
109. Agranov would be arrested on July 20, 1937, a fact not publicized. Khaustov and Samuelson, Stalin, NKVD, 232 (APRF, f. 3, op. 24, d. 313, l. 37); Pavliukov, Ezhov, 271–3.
110. Kosheleva et al., “Materialy fevral’-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP (b) 1937 goda” (1994, no. 8), 25 (Molotov).
111. When Pravda (Jan. 8, 1936) had reported on an assembly of so-called leading workers of machine tractor stations and agricultural agencies, Stalin had added Voroshilov’s name to the conclusion of the text as an object, along with himself and Molotov, of the panegyrics. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1479, l. 34–5.
112. “‘Cherkni . . . desiatok slov,’” 406.
113. Orlov, Tainaia istoriia, 325 (according to NKVD functionary L. L. Nikolsky).
114. Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 9–10.
