Yakov Saulovich Agranov (russian: Я́ков Сау́лович Агра́нов; born Yankel Samuilovich Sorenson; 12 October 1893–1 August 1938) was the first chief of the

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, ...

Main Directorate of State Security The Main Directorate of State Security (russian: Glavnoe upravlenie gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, Главное управление государственной безопасности, ГУГБ, GUGB) was the name of the Soviet The ...

and a deputy of

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. ...

chief

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 directo ...

. He is known as one of main organizers of

Soviet political repressions Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, tens of millions of people suffered political repression, which was an instrument of the state since the October Revolution. It culminated during the Stalin era, then declined, but it continued to exist ...

and

Stalinist Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory ...

show trials A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so t ...

in the 1920s and 1930s. He fabricated the " Tagantsev conspiracy" case and the

Moscow trials The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against " Trotskyists" and members of " Right Opposition" of the Communist Party o ...

, including the

Trial of the Twenty One In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, ...

and the Industrial Party Trial, as well as mass arrests and executions in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

during

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...

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 Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...

Biography

Agranov was born in 1893 in 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 ...

shopkeeper's family in Checherskaya, a village in the

Mogilev Governorate The Mogilev Governorate () or Government of Mogilev was a governorate () of the Russian Empire in the territory of the present day Belarus. Its capital was in Mogilev, referred to as Mogilev-on-the-Dnieper, or Mogilev Gubernskiy. The area of t ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

. In 1912 he joined the

Socialist-Revolutionary Party The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (the SRs, , or Esers, russian: эсеры, translit=esery, label=none; russian: Партия социалистов-революционеров, ), was a major polit ...

while working as a clerk and in 1915 joined the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; in , ''Rossiyskaya sotsial-demokraticheskaya rabochaya partiya (RSDRP)''), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party, was a socialist pol ...

. He was arrested by the tsarist police in 1915 and exiled to Yenesei province. In 1918, Agranov became secretary of Sovnarkom. At this time he was taking orders directly from

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

and

Felix Dzerzhinsky Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky ( pl, Feliks Dzierżyński ; russian: Фе́ликс Эдму́ндович Дзержи́нский; – 20 July 1926), nicknamed "Iron Felix", was a Bolshevik revolutionary and official, born into Polish nobility ...

. During this period Agranov was put in charge of compiling the lists of intellectuals for the forced exile of leading figures of Russian sciences and culture that were seen as the anti-Soviet element. Among those expelled were

Nikolai Berdyaev Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (; russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Бердя́ев; – 24 March 1948) was a Russian philosopher, theologian, and Christian existentialist who emphasized the existential spiritual sig ...

and

Nikolai Lossky Nikolay Onufriyevich Lossky. (; – 24 January 1965), also known as N. O. Lossky, was a Russian philosopher, representative of Russian idealism, intuitionist epistemology, personalism, libertarianism, ethics and axiology (value theory). He gave ...

. In 1921, Agranov was the chief investigator into the " Petrograd military organization", allegedly headed by Vladimir Tagantsev. Tagantsev was arrested and then tricked into giving names 300 "conspirators", who, he was told, would not be executed. in exchange for leniency for himself. The investigation ended with more than 85 persons being sentenced to death, including Tagantsev himself and the poet

Nikolay Gumilyov Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov ( rus, Никола́й Степа́нович Гумилёв, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj sʲtʲɪˈpanəvʲɪtɕ ɡʊmʲɪˈlʲɵf, a=Nikolay Styepanovich Gumilyov.ru.vorb.oga; April 15 NS 1886 – August 26, 1921) was a poe ...

. All concerned were promptly executed. When asked why he was so merciless, Agranov responded: "Seventy percent of Petrograd intellectuals were standing by one leg in the camp of our enemies. We had to burn that leg off". Vitaliy Shentalinsky, ''Crime Without Punishment'', Progress-Pleyada, Moscow, 2007, (

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

: Виталий Шенталинский, "Преступление без наказания"), page 214. Agranov also investigated the

Kronstadt rebellion The Kronstadt rebellion ( rus, Кронштадтское восстание, Kronshtadtskoye vosstaniye) was a 1921 insurrection of Soviet sailors and civilians against the Bolshevik government in the Russian SFSR port city of Kronstadt. Loc ...

and the peasant uprising in Tambov region. At the end of his career he led the

against the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization, the "Promparty" and "Working Peasant Party" cases. The cynical motto "If there is no enemy, he should be created, denounced and punished" was attributed to Yakov Agranov. Agranov was also implicated in suspicions concerning the suicide of poet

Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; rus, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский, , vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ məjɪˈkofskʲɪj, Ru-Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.ogg, links=y; – 14 Apr ...

in 1930. Mayakovsky, a former lover of

Lilya Brik Lilya Yuryevna Brik (alternatively spelled ''Lili'' or ''Lily''; russian: link=no, Ли́ля Ю́рьевна Брик; née Kagan; – August 4, 1978) was a Russian author and socialite, connected to many leading figures in the Russian avant ...

, shot himself with a gun given to him as a gift by Agranov, who, himself, had had a later affair with Brik, well known as the

muse In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in ...

of Mayakovsky. Immediately after the assassination of

Sergey Kirov Sergei Mironovich Kirov (né Kostrikov; 27 March 1886 – 1 December 1934) was a Soviet politician and Bolshevik revolutionary whose assassination led to the first Great Purge. Kirov was an early revolutionary in the Russian Empire and memb ...

in Leningrad on 1 December 1934, Agranov was entrusted with the organization of mass reprisals in the city. Stalin ordered him to fabricate a story that

Lev Kamenev Lev Borisovich Kamenev. (''né'' Rozenfeld; – 25 August 1936) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. Born in Moscow to parents who were both involved in revolutionary politics, Kamenev attended Imperial Moscow Uni ...

Grigory Zinoviev Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev, . Transliterated ''Grigorii Evseevich Zinov'ev'' according to the Library of Congress system. (born Hirsch Apfelbaum, – 25 August 1936), known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky (russian: Ов ...

and other leaders of the opposition were responsible for the murder, but he seems to have resisted, whereupon Stalin entrusted

Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Никола́й Ива́нович Ежо́в, p=nʲɪkɐˈɫaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the N ...

with the job instead. In 1935, he was ordered by Yezhov to track down and liquidate "an undiscovered centre of Trotskyists" in Moscow, as a preparatory step for the

that Stalin was planning. When Yezhov took over as head of the NKVD, Agranov remained his First Deputy, and in December 1936 was appointed Head of the Chief Directorate of State Security, which seemingly meant that he was to be trusted to purge the NKVD of officers Yezhov did not trust. In February 1937, he circulated among regional NKVD heads a demand for names of Trotskyists and other oppositionists employed with the state security apparatus. In April, he was demoted to the post of regional NKVD chief in

Saratov Saratov (, ; rus, Сара́тов, a=Ru-Saratov.ogg, p=sɐˈratəf) is the largest city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River upstream (north) of Volgograd. Saratov had a population of 901, ...

. He was arrested on 20 July 1937, and appeared on the execution list of 1 November 1937, in which his name was crossed out. He was executed by firing squad as an "

enemy of the people The term enemy of the people or enemy of the nation, is a designation for the political or class opponents of the subgroup in power within a larger group. The term implies that by opposing the ruling subgroup, the "enemies" in question are ac ...

" on 1 August 1938.Nikita Petrov and Marc Jansen, ''Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov 1895–1940'', 4 April 2002, , page 62 (chapter 3), available online at: http://www.hoover.org/publications/books/8348.

References

External links

Say a good word for a poor KGB man by Vladimir Voronov

{{DEFAULTSORT:Agranov, Yakov 1893 births 1938 deaths People from Chachersk District People from Rogachyovsky Uyezd Belarusian Jews Jews from the Russian Empire Soviet Jews Jewish socialists Cheka officers NKVD officers Socialist Revolutionary Party politicians Russian Social Democratic Labour Party members Commissars 1st Class of State Security Tagantsev conspiracy Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner Great Purge perpetrators Great Purge victims from Belarus Jews executed by the Soviet Union