Existed in 1934 - 1946. The NKVD has earned a sad reputation as an instrument of Stalinist repression. But all the heads of the NKVD and many of their deputies were themselves accused of what they should have eradicated - treason and attempted coup. All of them, as well as their victims, were shot.
Heinrich Yagoda
He worked in the Cheka and the OGPU, since 1934 a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), during the period of the internal party struggle he sided with Stalin and participated in suppressing the opposition. When the Central Committee (that is, Stalin) made a decision to arrest a person, Yagoda started a case, and soon the confession was knocked out of the victim, and everything that testified in favor of her innocence was swept aside.
Torture and fabrication were commonplace, in 1934 even the Politburo had to admit that the OGPU was actively using illegal methods of investigation. Nevertheless, Genrikh Yagoda in the same year became the first head of the NKVD. He also became the first creator of the GULAG. At the same time, Yagoda was not completely under Stalin's control - from time to time he made it clear that he would like to abandon fabrication and introduce repression into the framework of the law. Gradually, Stalin began to rely more and more on N. I. Yezhov, who did everything without asking any questions.
In 1936 Yagoda was removed from his post, and in 1937 he was arrested. He was accused not only of pandering to the opposition, but of participation in a conspiracy against Stalin and preparation of a coup d'etat. When Yagoda was asked at the trial if he regretted his betrayal, he replied that he only regretted that he did not shoot everyone when he "could have done it." Yagoda was convicted and shot in 1938. His entire family ended up in the camps, two sisters were shot.
After Yagoda's arrest, during a search they found not only Trotskyist literature, but also a lot of jewelry and money, pornographic films, postcards and a rubber dildo.
Promotional video:
Nikolay Yezhov
It would seem that Stalin found the ideal people's commissar. Yezhov mercilessly persecuted the Trotskyists and other persons disloyal to the leader. He became a tireless performer of the Great Terror of 1937-1938. Trotskyists, Zinovievites, Bukharinites - tens and hundreds of thousands of people were convicted of contact with oppositionists and conspirators (real or imaginary), imprisoned or shot.
In 1938 Yezhov was removed, and Lavrenty Beria was put in his place. Yezhov was arrested and accused of preparing terrorists and a putsch on the 21st anniversary of the revolution. In addition, Yezhov was accused of sodomy (by the way, he admitted this easily, and wrote a list of his lovers, including his guard: all these people were later shot). By the way, during a search of Yezhov's house, they found the same dildo that was previously found at Yagoda's. For the rest, Yezhov did not admit his guilt. But in 1940 he was still shot, and his family was also repressed.
Lavrenty Beria
An old party member and state security officer, Beria remained the head of the NKVD until the end of 1935. He was able to fully prove his loyalty to Stalin and prevent conspiracies against himself among his subordinates. Until Stalin's death in 1953, Beria remained one of the first persons in the USSR. And only in the course of the struggle for power against Malenkov, Khrushchev and Bulganin was he accused of espionage and shot.
But most of the bloodiest Stalinist executioners shared the fate of Yagoda and Yezhov even under Stalin. Ya. Agranov (Yagoda and Yezhov's ally) was shot in 1938, G. Prokofiev (Yagoda's deputy) - shot in 1937, M. Berman, M. Frinovsky, L. Belsky, V. Kursky, S. Zhukovsky, L. Zakovsky and many other terrorists were executed in 1937-1939. Those who, together with Yagoda and Yezhov, denounced and punished the traitors, like themselves, were declared traitors.
Why Stalin executed them remains a mystery, while the archival documents about the investigation and trials of these people are closed. Most likely, Stalin solved two main tasks: firstly, it was necessary to eliminate those who knew too much about the mechanisms of repression and on whom later, if necessary, could be blamed for the executions of innocent people, and secondly, while the repression were in full swing, Stalin had not yet fully established himself in the role of the indisputable and only contender for power.
The concentration of power in the hands of the heads of the NKVD at the height of the terror made them potentially dangerous for Stalin. It might have seemed convenient to remove them after they had done all the dirty work, but had not yet had time to acquire personal trust and personal supporters. Only Beria escaped this fate under Stalin, who came at the end of the Great Terror and was maximally loyal to the already irrevocably established Stalin in character.
Konstantin Dmitriev