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Mark Gai
Mark Isaevich Gai (Russian: Марк Исаевич Гай) (real name: Mark Isaacovich Shtoklyand; Марк Исаакович Штоклянд) (30 December 1898 – 20 June 1937) was a Soviet security and police officer, who played a major part in preparing the Great Purge, during the early stages of which he was arrested and executed. Career Mark Gai was born in Vinnytsia, and graduated in 1918 in law from St Valentine University, Kiev. He joined the Red Guards around the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, and operated underground in Kiev during the early part of the Russian Civil War. He enlisted in the Red Army in October 1918, and was appointed chief political commissar for a rifle division in 1920. He joined the Cheka in Ukraine in May 1920, and transferred in May 1922 to Moscow, where he held a succession of posts, rising to be deputy head of the Economic Department of the OGPU in August 1931. In June 1933, Gai succeeded Gleb Bokii as head of the Special Department of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin's campaign to solidify his power over the party and the state; the Purge, purges were also designed to remove the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky as well as other prominent political rivals within the party. It occurred from August 1936 to March 1938. Following the Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin, death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 a power vacuum opened in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Communist Party. Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, outmaneuvered political opponents and ultimately gained control of the Communist Party by 1928. Initially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zinovy Ushakov
Zinovy Markovich Ushakov (Russian: Зиновий Маркович Ушаков; 7 November 1895 – 26 January 1940) was a Soviet police officer who became a notorious torturer during the Great Purge. Career He was born in Kiev province, the son of a carpenter. Ushakov left school at age 13 to work the same trade, but was drafted into the Imperial Russian armed forces in 1916. Arrested for desertion, he escaped after spending 50 days in prison. During the Russian Civil War, he fought as a partisan in Ukraine. He joined the Cheka in Kiev in 1920, and was based in Ukraine until 1934, when he was transferred to Saratov. From February 1935 to December 1936, he was deputy head of the Special Department of the NKVD in the Belorussian Belarus Republic. Ushakov was transferred to Moscow in January 1937, as assistant to the head of the special department of the NKVD, Mark Gai. He played a major role in fabricating the case against Marshal Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NKVD Officers
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. Established in 1917 as NKVD of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the agency was originally tasked with conducting regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, with its functions being dispersed among other agencies, only to be reinstated as an all-union commissariat in 1934. The functions of the OGPU (the secret police organization) were transferred to the NKVD around the year 1930, giving it a monopoly over law enforcement activities that lasted until the end of World War II. During this period, the NKVD included both ordinary public order activities, and secret police activities. The NKVD is known for its role in political repression and for carrying out the Great Pu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cheka Officers
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated as VChK ( rus, ВЧК, p=vɛ tɕe ˈka), and commonly known as Cheka ( rus, Чека, p=tɕɪˈka; from the initialism russian: ЧК, ChK, label=none), was the first of a succession of Soviet secret-police organizations. Established on December 5 (Old Style) 1917 by the Sovnarkom, it came under the leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat-turned-Bolshevik. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had sprung up in the RSFSR at the oblast, guberniya, raion, uyezd, and volost levels. Ostensibly set up to protect the revolution from reactionary forces, i.e., "class enemies" such as the bourgeoisie and members of the clergy, it soon became the repression tool against all political opponents of the communist regime. At the direc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
People From Vinnytsia
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts. In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self: both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes. The plural form "people" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1937 Deaths
Events January * January 1 – Anastasio Somoza García becomes President of Nicaragua. * January 5 – Water levels begin to rise in the Ohio River in the United States, leading to the Ohio River flood of 1937, which continues into February, leaving 1 million people homeless and 385 people dead. * January 15 – Spanish Civil War: Second Battle of the Corunna Road ends inconclusively. * January 20 – Second inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt: Franklin D. Roosevelt is sworn in for a second term as President of the United States. This is the first time that the United States presidential inauguration occurs on this date; the change is due to the ratification in 1933 of the Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution. * January 23 – Moscow Trials: Trial of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center – In the Soviet Union 17 leading Communists go on trial, accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime, and assa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1898 Births
Events January–March * January 1 – New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York as the world's second largest. The city is geographically divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. * January 13 – Novelist Émile Zola's open letter to the President of the French Republic on the Dreyfus affair, ''J'Accuse…!'', is published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper ''L'Aurore'', accusing the government of wrongfully imprisoning Alfred Dreyfus and of antisemitism. * February 12 – The automobile belonging to Henry Lindfield of Brighton rolls out of control down a hill in Purley, London, England, and hits a tree; thus he becomes the world's first fatality from an automobile accident on a public highway. * February 15 – Spanish–American War: The USS ''Maine'' explodes and sinks in Havana Harbor, Cuba, for reasons never fully established, killing 266 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smolensk
Smolensk ( rus, Смоленск, p=smɐˈlʲensk, a=smolensk_ru.ogg) is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest cities in Russia. Population: The city has been destroyed several times throughout its long history because it was on the invasion routes of various empires. Smolensk is known for its electronics, textiles, food processing, and diamond faceting industries. Etymology The name of the city is derived from the name of the Smolnya River. Smolnya river flows through Karelian and Murmansk areas of north-western Russia. The origin of the river's name is less clear. One possibility is the old Slavic word () for black soil, which might have colored the waters of the Smolnya. An alternative origin could be the Russian word (), which means resin, tar, or pitch. Pine trees grow in the area, and the city was once a center of resin processing and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lubyanka Building
The Lubyanka ( rus, Лубянка, p=lʊˈbʲankə) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Neo-Baroque building with a facade of yellow brick designed by Alexander V. Ivanov in 1897 and augmented by Aleksey Shchusev from 1940 to 1947. It was previously the national headquarters of the KGB. Soviet hammer and sickles can be seen on the building's facade. Description The Lubyanka building is home to the Lubyanka prison, the headquarters of the Border Guard Service, a KGB museum, and a subsection of the FSB. Part of the prison was turned into a prison museum, but a special authorization is required for visits. The lower floors are made of granite with emblazoned Soviet crests. History Origins The Lubyanka was originally built in 1898 as the headquarters of the All-Russia Insurance Company (''Rossiya Insurance Company''), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism. Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, ''Pravda'', and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Omsk Oblast
Omsk Oblast (russian: О́мская о́бласть, ''Omskaya oblast'') is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in southwestern Siberia. The oblast has an area of . Its population is 1,977,665 ( 2010 Census) with the majority, 1.12 million, living in Omsk, the administrative center. The oblast borders with Tyumen Oblast in the north and west, Novosibirsk and Tomsk Oblasts in the east, and with Kazakhstan in the south. Geography Omsk Oblast shares borders with Kazakhstan (North Kazakhstan Region and Pavlodar Region) to the south, Tyumen Oblast in the west and Novosibirsk Oblast and Tomsk Oblast in the east. It is included in the Siberian Federal District. The territory stretches for from north to south and from west to east. The main water artery is the Irtysh River and its tributaries the Ishim, Om, Osha, and Tara Rivers. The region is located in the West Siberian Plain, consisting of mostly flat terrain. In the south is the Ishim Plain, gradually turning i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda ( rus, Ге́нрих Григо́рьевич Яго́да, Genrikh Grigor'yevich Yagoda, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised arrests, show trials, and executions of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, climactic events of the Great Purge. Yagoda also supervised construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal with Naftaly Frenkel, using penal labor from the GULAG system, during which 12,000–25,000 laborers died. Like many Soviet NKVD officers who conducted political repression, Yagoda himself ultimately became a victim of the Purge. He was demoted from the directorship of the NKVD in favor of Nikolai Yezhov in 1936 and arrested in 1937. Charged with crimes of wrecking, espionage, Trotskyism and conspiracy, Yagoda was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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