Secret Police

Question 1

Order

Answer 1

1917- Establishment of Cheka
1921-22 Red Terror
1934- OGPU becomes NKVD as it merges with the Interior Ministry

Question 2

Yagoda

Answer 2

• Came in 1934
• Extensive use of gulags as not only places to re-educate religious opponents but to support industrial plans in places where no one would go
• White Sea Channel; 10,000 lives and useless as it only was 3,5m deep
• During Great Purge he was ordered to deal with Trotskyists in the governement. Eventually someone named him

Question 3

Yezhov

Answer 3

• The bloody dwarf
• Quotas on executions in labour camps
• Loads of spies, under-cover plain clothes police officers in public
• At some he was processing 230 prisoners a day

Question 4

Beria

Answer 4

• Put an end to the excessive behaviours (waste of manpower) of secret police. Trials and arrests only held when evidence found.
• Gulag made productive (Better food rationing, 1K experts sent including Tupolev, output 1937 2M rubles- 1940 4,5M rubles)
• Murder of Trostky in Mexico