Semyon Grigoryevich Firin (Russian: Семён Григорьевич Фирин; June 30, 1898 – August 14, 1937) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

officer in the intelligence services

OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...

and

NKVD 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. ...

. Later in his career, he was a leader in different

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

forced labor camps until he was executed during the

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 ...

Life and career

Firin was born to a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family. His original surname was Pupko. In the 1920s, he served as an intelligence officer in various European countries. He became the deputy chief of

White Sea–Baltic Canal The White Sea–Baltic Canal (russian: Беломо́рско-Балти́йский кана́л, , ), often abbreviated to White Sea Canal () is a ship canal in Russia opened on 2 August 1933. It connects the White Sea, in the Arctic Ocean, with ...

forced labor camp under the supervision of

Matvei Berman Matvei Davidovich Berman (Russian: Матвей Давыдович Берман; April 10, 1898 – March 7, 1939) was a Soviet security officer and head of the Gulag Soviet prison camp system from 1932 to 1937.Khlevniuk, p. 346 Biography ...

in 1932. He was awarded the Order of Lenin for his participation in the management of the construction of the canal in 1933.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...

named Semyon Firin as one of the six supervisors responsible for 30,000 deaths during the construction of the canal in his book ''

The Gulag Archipelago ''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' (russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, ''Arkhipelag GULAG'') is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr So ...

''. After the White-Sea Baltic Canal was finished, he became the leading NKVD official alongside Sergey Zhuk and

Lazar Kogan Lazar Iosifovich Kogan (russian: Ла́зарь Ио́сифович Ко́ган) (November 7, 1889 – March 3, 1939) was a Soviet secret police (Cheka, OGPU, NKVD) high-ranking functionary, chief of the Gulag (1930–1932) and deputy chief of t ...

in the ''Dmitlag'' forced labor camp based in

Dmitrov Dmitrov ( rus, Дмитров, p=ˈdmʲitrəf) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, town and the administrative center of Dmitrovsky District, Moscow Oblast, Dmitrovsky District in Moscow Oblast, Russia, located to the north of Mosco ...

where the inmates were building the

Moscow Canal The Moscow Canal (russian: Кана́л и́мени Москвы́), named the Moskva–Volga Canal until 1947, is a canal in Russia that connects the Moskva River with the Volga River. It is located in Moscow itself and in the Moscow ...

. In August 1933, Firin was upset that there were too many frail workers who were not meeting production goals. He ordered the camp leaders to cut their food rations as a punishment which meant they only got weaker and thus were "unloaded". Firin was arrested for allegedly participating in an Operational-Chekist coup to prepare a "palace revolution" on 28 April 1937. He was executed by a firing squad on 14 August, 1937.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Firin, Semyon 1898 births 1937 deaths Cheka officers NKVD officers People from Vilnius People from Vilna Governorate category:Russian Jews Jewish socialists Old Bolsheviks Great Purge victims from Russia Jews executed by the Soviet Union People executed for treason against the Soviet Union Deaths by firearm in Russia Soviet rehabilitations Gulag governors