THE RED TERROR
VISHNIAK, MARK
The Red Terror Part 3 — Yagoda and the OGPU By Mark Vishniak ' This is the third of five aulhonla ' 1 lira articles by Mark Vishniak on 1 Serial Russia's use of terror as an instrument of...
...Political "criminals" were victims of Soviet and not of capitalist society...
...Terr t began to be applied on a universr.l scale "without distinction as to tace, creed, se.v or age...
...The use of : hild labor also flourished under Yagt da...
...It wasn't his own idea...
...rcordingly...
...In 1931, Molotov stated that forced labor was used in the construction of highways...
...New York, Harrison, Smith and R. Haas, p. 337...
...M MENZHINSKY IS A PUPIL worthy of his teacher, Dzerzhinsky," states the big Soviet Encyclopedia...
...The result was irrefutable evidence of the effectiveness^ of forced labor...
...To be pitted against Yogoda meant at least prison raid probable death," said one of his henchmen...
...The Red Terror Part 3 — Yagoda and the OGPU By Mark Vishniak ' This is the third of five aulhonla ' 1 lira articles by Mark Vishniak on 1 Serial Russia's use of terror as an instrument of "ripping a now society 'out oi the womb of the old...
...Another source of labor supply was found during the period of the dekulakization" of peasants...
...Oral and written proj ganda were relentlessly used in the.'- camps...
...Vice-t Chairman of the Unified State Political Department (OGPU) since 1924...
...Doing the Yagoda regime the Red 1 Terror was used not only as a means of i/'.imidation and destruction, but alsc .is a commercial inducement...
...It was a very old...
...AT CHRISTMAS, 1929, a blueprint • was submitted for the construction of the canal...
...He rose very quickly to a top position under Dzerzhinsky...
...65, p. 336, published in 1931, before Vol...
...A poster there read: And if some day the enemy's ring Cruelly tightens around us We shall rise like an army of daring men And follow Yagoda to battle...
...With the development of Five-Year plans and the growing complexity of their problems, the lystem supplying free labor by the NKVD and the OGPU was extended...
...Yagoda's marriage to a relative of Yakov Sverd!ov, tae "President," opened the doors oi the Bolshevik aristocracy to him...
...Speeding up Industrialization," the "FiveYear Plan In Four Years," and the "Building of Socialism in one Country" without any foreign capital, all these tasks from then on were furnished their own solid economic foundation...
...In time, he became a cornerstone of the „ entire Soviet regime...
...Among them were peasants banished from villages' which were transformed into kolkhozes, workers who broke "labor discipline," intellectuals, etc...
...He was in constant contact with Andrei Vishinsky, the Deputy Prosecutor of the Soviet Union...
...From 1930 on he was de facto boss of the OGPU...
...The project was to be built entirely with the use of the free manual labor of those whom the Soviet authorities could kill at their pleasure, or else compel to work for their own glorification...
...There, side by side with the dithyrambs to Yagoda, one can read the words of Gorky, the former humanitarian and lover of freedom: ''This labor reform policy of the GPU, this policy of education by teaching the truths of socialism, and through socially useful labor, has been splendidly justified...
...But in the Chekhist arsenal physical coercion and death remai i d the main weapon...
...The Belomar Canal paved the way for the projects and camps at Samara, Cheliabinsk, Magnitorsk...
...I tight to resurrect toiling humanity to a new life...
...He was treacherously slain in 1934 on the orders of the provocateur and Fascist, Yagoda, to serve the purposes of the right-Trotskyite Woe...
...The main achievement of Yagoda along this line was the construction of the canal uniting the White Sea with the Baltic, and thus with the* Atlantic Ocean...
...His innate shrewdness continuously iioused his desire for revenge...
...This blueprint was worked out by engineers who were the prisoners of the Cheka, and it appealed tremendously to the Soviet authorities because it didn't call for any outlay of foreign currency...
...Yagoda had an expressionless face, a dull gaze, and a small mustache...
...RE -EDUCATION of prison and camp inmti'es followed a double tack, i.e., the ) othed of the stick and the carrot— by " reatening with solitary, by advert ng names, by increasing the dun on of detention, by promising bett' food rations...
...e • *>¦¦ THE CANAL was named after Stalin, and Yagoda and his closest friends received the Order of Lenin...
...The prison system itself was geared toward that goal...
...for the VolgaDon Canal, the new Baikal railroad, the gold mines of Kelyma, etc...
...A book with pictures of the canal glorified Yagoda and his acolytes...
...As Menzhinsky was often ill, Yagoda took over long before Menzhinsky's death...
...Yagoda, who has so many awful crimes on his conscience that it is not necessary to invent any, began his work with the Vecheka in 1919...
...Vol...
...Later Vishinsky pitilessly sneered at and ridiculed Yagoda at his show trial before sending him to the execution squad in the cellar below...
...Minors as young as twelve years, ; pprehended for stealing "socialist property," were brought before the :rim nal courts and imprisoned or sent to camps, and...
...in extraordinary cases, were even sentenced to death (the famous law of April 7. 1935...
...He was without much education...
...The speeding of industrialization" and of "Socialism in One Country" turned into a profitable enterprise for the simple reason that the raw material and the human labor had been "nationalized," and consequently hardly cost anything...
...indeed a classic idea—to use the enemy as much as possible before killing him...
...In previous articles, Mr...
...The Dictatorship of the Proletariat has once more earned the right to declare: T do not fight to kill as does the bourgeoisie...
...Gorky wrote the introduction and the conclusion...
...IN 1934 YAGODA became head of the newJy created People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the NKVD...
...Gradually, a whole generation of professional Chel 'lists ' grew up who knew the Rey( uticn of 1917 only by hearsay...
...The GPU and NKVD were given the hard task of "re-educating" and "revamping" the Criminal for "an honest life and work" in order "to create new tools and a few man" On April 29, 1937, lzvestia Wrote: "The Cheka educators reform the hooligans, embezzlers and others and send them back to society as •worthy builders, Stakhanovites, shocktroopers...
...It was similar to "a department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs...
...it became, a lucrative tool, utilized by the NKVD and by the state in general...
...It was a compendium of the work of the "35 best Soviet writers," done under the direction of Maxim Gorky and two Chekists...
...From various prisons, 200300,000 slaves were herded together...
...The same Big Encyclopedia (in Vol...
...at present, nominee to the Central Committee of the Ail-Union Communist Party, and a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR...
...At that time, the portraits of the future "Fascist-Provocateur" were seen in great numbers in all Soviet publications, and, of course, in all the offices of the GPU, in the prisons and camps, etc...
...It was not only the particular period or his environment alone, but chiefly circumstances that pushed him toward Revolution...
...A reformatory for juvenile delinquents in Bolshevo (near Moscow) was named after Yagoda...
...another died in military service during a not...
...founder of the Vecheka...
...Yagoda had received the highest degree of recognition and power, only to fall to the lowest depths of the Bolshevik Purgatory and Hell—his fate: to be continuously vilified posthumously...
...To illustrate Soviet ethics, we may add that when the same humanitarian, Gorky, was asked by the prisoners to intercede for them, he declared through the press: "People whose historical duty it was to kill some beings in order to free others are martyrs and my conscience will never permit me to condemn them...
...Yagoda's star rose with Stalin's first five-Year plan...
...and of Vyacheslav Menshinsky...
...He neither ;poke nor wrote well...
...The GULAG was created (the State Authority for Camps...
...lzvestia and other spokesmen of the Soviet Government prudently failed to mention that political "criminals" were likewise subjected to the same "education" and "revamping...
...the orotic aasthoto who succeeded him...
...In the year 1929-1930, when the OGPU efficiently "managed" the lumber camps of the Northern Regions, Stalin demonstrated his confidence in Yagoda's ability...
...801-2...
...39, pp...
...1938...
...The project was approved...
...He icon became quite indispensable...
...One of his brothers, while still a boy, was killed by a soldier during the Scrmovo uprising...
...All penal institutions were placed under its control and jurisdiction...
...Toward the end of 1932, Yagoda, with the help of 36 equally-cruel Chekists, was able to complete the canal, which was built almost entirely with the bare hands of the prisoners, with their blood and bones...
...38) speaks of Genrikh Yakovlevich Yagoda in the most respectful terms: "A Communist, a prominent Soviet statesman . . . Member of the Presidium of the Vecheka in 1920...
...Vishniak told the story of Felix Dsershinsky...
...In 1938 Yagoda was tried and found guilty particularly for having two years earlier poisoned his fellow-countryman and glorifier, Maxim Gorky...
...Belomar—An Account of the Construction of the New Canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea...
...UNDER YAGODA, Lenin's idea that under socialism criminals could be reeducated through labor began to be realized on a wide scale...
Vol. 32 • May 1949 • No. 20
