This world is ancient, pre-ancient
Its own law.
No rules, trust me
He does not want to know.
Day and night in it, without ceasing, Crying sounds and laughter.
From what is missing
Pirozhkov for everyone."
("Ancient World", song from the movie "Dear Boy", muses. D. Tukhmanova, lyrics L. Derbeneva.)
In his book 1984, George Orwell prophetically wrote that human society was almost always divided into three groups, the goals of which were absolutely incompatible. The purpose of the higher group is to stay where they have already climbed. The goal of the middle group is to take the place of the higher ones, since they are no worse. But the lower ones have a completely idealistic goal: to abolish all social differences and create a society where all people would be equal and therefore happy.
Genrikh Yagoda on the platform of the mausoleum. It seems nowhere higher …
However, they do not know how to achieve this, because they work hard and do not have the appropriate education for this, and therefore the knowledge. For a long time, the higher ones seem to be firmly holding power in their hands, but then sooner or later a moment comes when they degenerate, or the years of a quiet life dull their grip, or both the former and the latter. The averages, noticing this, go to the lower ones, play the role of fighters for their freedom and universal justice, and thus attract them to their side. The lower ones die on the barricades, rot in the trenches, and all for the sake of the middle ones throwing the higher ones off their pedestal. But, having reached the goal, the middle ones push the lower ones back, because universal equality is simply impossible. But immediately new averages appear, into which one of the lower ones also falls - not without this, of course, and the struggle begins again. As a result, only the lower ones never achieve their goals, even for a short time, and all the improvements in their lives are connected almost entirely and completely with the material progress of society.
The clarity of this provision has been confirmed at all levels. However, it is probably best traced in the example of personalities. True, there are also thousands and thousands of them, so you cannot tell about all of them, but there are also significant persons among them. One of them is Genrikh Grigorievich Yagoda, or Enoch Gershevich Yehuda, who was born in 1891 in the Yaroslavl province in the city of Rybinsk, in the family of a printer-engraver. The family was large: two sons and five daughters.
Interestingly, Yagoda's father, Gershon Filippovich, was a cousin to Mikhail Izrailevich Sverdlov, that is, the father of the future famous revolutionary Yakov Sverdlov. Yagoda himself was married to Ida Leonidovna Averbakh, who was the natural daughter of Yakov Sverdlov's sister Sofia Mikhailovna, that is, her second cousin niece. In 1929, their son Garik was born. The famous Soviet writer Leopold Averbakh was Ida's brother.
When the Enoch family moved to Nizhny Novgorod, Yagoda met there with Yakov Sverdlov.
Although it is believed that many things were forbidden to Jews in Tsarist Russia, Enoch nevertheless received a secondary education and received a decent job as a statistician.
Already in 1904, Yagoda's father agreed that an underground printing house of the Nizhny Novgorod Committee of the RSDLP (b) be set up in his apartment, and it is clear that young Enoch took part in its work. Lenin's elder brother Alexander, as you know, died, but Enoch's older brother, Mikhail, also died (during the armed uprising in Sormovo in 1905).
At fifteen he contacted the communist anarchists in Nizhny Novgorod, and in 1911 he was given the task to go to Moscow and negotiate with a group of anarchists there on the subject of a joint "expropriation" of the bank. He came to Moscow and began to live there with a false passport, but … he was detained by the police, because as a Jew, he had no right to settle in the capital. It was proved that he was associated with radical elements, but the court showed condescension to him, since the young man had (it seems!) The intention to convert to the Orthodox faith, that is, to be baptized. Therefore, he was punished … for two years he was exiled to Simbirsk, where his grandfather … had his own house.
Then, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, an amnesty followed, and the term of exile at Yagoda was reduced to one year. Yes, this is not the United States, where during the time of Sacco and Vanzetti there was an iron slogan: "Bullets for the rabble, a rope for the leaders!" He said that he would accept Orthodoxy and renounce Judaism - "good boy", but that he was preparing to rob a bank, well, he didn’t rob him. This is how Henrikh Yagoda became Orthodox, because atheism in Russia at that time was a criminal offense, as well as leaving the Orthodox faith in which you were born. Well, with a stamp in his passport about the "correct faith" he got the opportunity to live and work not just anywhere, but in the capital itself, in St. Petersburg, where he got a job in 1913 at the Putilov factory.
G. Yagoda's documents from the secret police register of 1912.
The funniest thing, however, is not this, but the fact that in 1930 Yagoda's deputy, a certain Trilisser, an old party member who spent ten years in the tsarist penal servitude, for some reason decided to check the biography of his immediate superior. And it turned out that the biography that Yagoda wrote for the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee does not correspond to reality. So he pointed out that he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1907, and in 1911 he was sent into exile and then actively participated in the October Revolution. In fact, he turned out to be the Bolshevik party only in the summer of 1917, and previously had nothing to do with the Bolsheviks.
In 1915, Genrikh Yagoda was drafted into the army, fought and even rose to the rank of corporal. However, being wounded in the fall of 1916, he was demobilized and returned back to Petrograd. In the pre-revolutionary years, he met Maxim Gorky and then maintained friendly relations with him.
During the October Revolution he was in Petrograd and took part in it. From November 22 (December 5), 1917 to April 1918, he was the editor of the newspaper "Village Poorota" - that's what it meant to have a certificate of secondary education for those years.
This was followed by work in the Cheka, and in 1918-1919. he is already an employee of the Supreme Military Inspectorate of the Red Army. In 1919, Ya. M. Sverdlov and F. E. Dzerzhinsky noticed Yagoda and transferred him to work in Moscow. Since 1920, he became a member of the Presidium of the Cheka, then a member of the board of the GPU.
With his wife Ida Averbakh, September 30, 1922.
Since September 1923 Yagoda is already the second deputy chairman of the OGPU. Finally, after the death of Dzerzhinsky and due to the illness of V. R. Menzhinsky, Yagoda, who at that time was his deputy, actually became the head of the OGPU. Career growth was supported by Yagoda's successes along the party line: so in 1930-1934. he becomes a candidate member of the Central Committee, since 1934 - a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). All this time, in the course of the factional internal party struggle in the CPSU (b), he supported I. V. Stalin, and he also directed the defeat of the anti-Stalinist demonstrations that took place in October 1927. He also successfully completed the construction of the White Sea Canal, for which he received the Order of Lenin in August 1933.
G. G. Yagoda (far left) with V. R. Menzhinsky and F. E. Dzerzhinsky in 1924.
And here "Akela almost missed." It all started with the fact that at the beginning of 1933, in the system of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture and the People's Commissariat of State Farms of the USSR, an espionage and sabotage organization was discovered that was engaged in espionage in favor of … Japan! Among the spies were about 100 well-known agricultural specialists, including the deputy people's commissar of agriculture F. M. Konar and A. M. Markevich, and the deputy people's commissar of state farms of the USSR M. M. Wolf. During the trial, 14 defendants retracted their previous testimonies. But all equally 40 people were shot as pests, and the rest ended up in camps. Of the 23 accused of espionage, 21 were sentenced to death. However, A. M. Markevich managed to write a letter from the camp addressed to Stalin, Molotov and the USSR Prosecutor I. A. Akulov, in which he pointed out that the methods of investigation in his case were illegal.
Another statement was sent to the head of the complaints bureau of the Soviet Control Commission, MI Ulyanova, AG Revis, another of the two surviving "Japanese spies," and the complainants' case was set in motion. On September 15, 1934, a Politburo commission was created to study these statements, which included Kaganovich, Kuibyshev and Akulov, and it came to the hard-hitting conclusion that both statements were true. Moreover, the commission revealed other violations of Soviet legality by the organs of the OGPU and the NKVD - torture of those under investigation and fabrication of their cases. A draft resolution was prepared, providing for the eradication of such methods of investigation, as well as punishment of all those responsible and a corresponding review of the cases of Revis and Markevich. But then the murder of Kirov happened just in time, the "class struggle in the USSR" suddenly sharply intensified again, and the draft resolution "above" was not adopted, and Genrikh Yagoda, accordingly, was not punished.
Moreover, when the NKVD of the USSR was created in July 1934, this new People's Commissariat, and its most important part, the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB), was headed not by anyone, namely Genrikh Yagoda!
There is evidence, in any case, they are cited in various sources, that Yagoda seemed to be striving to liberalize the punitive policy of the Soviet state, and that Kaganovich and Voroshilov spoke about this in a similar vein.
However, it was under the leadership of Yagoda that the GULAG was created, the network of Soviet forced labor camps increased sharply, and the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal was begun by the hands of prisoners. Thirty-six prominent Soviet writers, headed by Maxim Gorky himself, were invited to cover this "construction site of communism".
Yagoda quite officially bore the amazing title of "the first initiator, organizer and ideological leader of the socialist industry of the taiga and the North." However, according to the historian O. V. Khlevnyuk, it was not Yagoda who pursued the direct Stalinist line in the investigations on all these cases, but Yezhov, who "entered into a conspiracy against the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs … and his supporters" Ya. S. Agranov - with one from Yagoda's deputies.
In 1935, Yagoda, the first in the USSR, became the "General Commissar of State Security." That is, he received the title equal to the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union and an apartment in the Kremlin, which at that time existed in the unofficial hierarchy of unofficial incentives spoke of the highest degree of trust. There was already talk of Yagoda's probable election to the Politburo. A year in August 1936, with his active participation, the first demonstration Moscow trial against the "enemies of the people" Kamenev and Zinoviev took place. But this was the peak of his career, since fate had already raised its heavy hand over him.
However, Yagoda did not even suspect that "everything is not as good as it seems", he did not think about anything "like that" and completely surrendered himself to the "lot of luck" that had fallen on him. “The frivolity displayed by Yagoda during these months reached the point of ridiculousness,” later recalled one of his subordinates. “He got carried away with dressing up the NKVD officers in a new uniform with gold and silver braids and at the same time worked on a charter regulating the rules of conduct and etiquette of NKVDists.”
But on the introduction of the new uniform, he did not calm down at all, and decided in addition to introduce a super uniform for the highest ranks of the NKVD, which was supposed to include a white gabardine jacket with gold embroidery, blue trousers and patent leather boots. Something reminiscent of all this creative aspirations of Marshal Goering, who was just as keen on creating uniforms for himself and his subordinates. Moreover, being the chief forester of the Third Reich, he even in this case came up with an impressive uniform "uniform" with a dagger on his belt! To paraphrase the great Tolstoy, it is quite possible to say: "Smart people are smart in their own way, but stupid people are equally stupid!"
Interestingly, since patent leather was not produced in the USSR at that time, Yagoda gave the order to subscribe the necessary batch from abroad, paying for it in foreign currency. However, the main decoration of this elite super uniform was supposed to be a small gilded dagger, similar to the dagger of the officers of the navy of the Russian Empire."
The changing of the guards in the Kremlin, in his opinion, should have taken place in full view of the public and to the music, in the best traditions of the tsarist life guards. By his order, even a special cadet company was formed, in which guys were selected - real heroes under two meters in height! In general, Genrikh Yagoda really reveled in the power he had received, like a gourmet overeating exquisite dishes.
Maxim Gorky and Genrikh Yagoda. Not earlier than November 1935 (RGASPI, F. 558, op. 11, D. 1656, sheet 9).
A. Orlov, who worked at that time in the apparatus of the People's Commissar, wrote later that “Yagoda not only did not foresee what would happen to him in the near future, on the contrary, he never felt so confident as then, in the summer of 1936 … I don’t know how the old foxes Fouche or Machiavelli felt themselves in such situations. Did they foresee the storm that was gathering over their heads to sweep them away in a few months? But I know very well that Yagoda, who met with Stalin every day, could not read anything in his eyes that would give rise to alarm."
And then the following happened: in the evening of September 25, 1936, Lazar Kaganovich was delivered a telegram addressed to him along with other members of the Politburo, signed by Stalin and Zhdanov. It read: “We consider it absolutely necessary and urgent to appoint Cde. Yezhov was appointed to the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. Yagoda was clearly not at the height of his task in exposing the Trotskyite-Zinovievist bloc of the OGPU; he was four years late in this matter. All party workers and most of the regional representatives of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs speak about this. You can leave Agranov as Yezhov's deputy in the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs …"
But the pill to the disgraced People's Commissar, of course, was sweetened, and it was made by none other than Stalin himself. That is, he wrote one thing to his associates in the Politburo, but to the disgraced People's Commissar on September 26, 1936, quite another:
Comrade. Berry.
The People's Commissariat of Communications is a very important matter. This is the People's Commissariat for Defense. I have no doubt that you will be able to put this People's Commissariat on its feet. I beg you to agree to the work of the People's Commissariat for Communications. Without a good People's Commissariat of Communications, we feel like we have no hands. Narkomsvyaz must not be left in its current position. She urgently needs to be put on her feet.
I. Stalin.
Two "stars": one rising (on the left), and the one on the right, is about to set in forever!
But already on January 29, 1937, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR made a decision to transfer the General Commissar of State Security G. G. Yagoda to the reserve. This was the second blow, which meant his actual renunciation of all power. Then he was expelled from the party, at the February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the same year he was subjected to harsh party criticism.
