Stalin and His Hangmen

Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him by Donald Rayfield, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005.

Dzierźyński

Felix Dzierźyński was born a Polish noble. He was the creator of the CHEKA (later called the NKVD and KGB). The purpose of the Cheka was to  root out counter-revolutionaries. The Cheka killed people without charges or trial. The Cheka read citizen’s mail and telegrams. The Cheka infiltrated labor unions. Dzierźyński purged Socialist Revolutionaries working in the Cheka.

Menzhinksy

Viacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinksy succeeded Dzierźyński  as head of the Cheka created phony anti-Bolshevik organizations, such as The Trust and Syndicate-2, to lure. in opponents of Bolshevism. persecuted the Russian Orthodox and its Patriarch Tikhon. staged the Shakhty mining engineers show trials. staged Mensheviks show trials. crushed the peasantry

Yagoda

Genrikh Iagoda (sometimes spelled Yagoda) succeeded Menzhinksy as head of the Cheka. Under his watch, the Cheka infiltrated the intelligentsia and literati. It helped persuade Maxim Gorky to return from Capri to the Soviet Union, where Gorky white-washed the Solovetsky prison camps. The Cheka supervised the building of the White Sea Canal with slave labor. The Cheka deported 30 thousand Inkeri (Ingrian) Finns to northern Russia and Tajikistan

Yezhov

Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov (Yezhov) succeeded Iagoda as head of the Cheka. Purged the NKVD of Poles, Jews, and Latvians. Purged the Red Army and Commintern. Greatly expanded the number of prisoners in the Gulag. Organized Moscow show trials of framed old Bolsheviks

Beria

Lavrenti Beria, a Mingrelian, succeeded Ezhov as head of the Cheka in 1938. Beria deported  the Karachai Turks, the Kalmyk Buddhist Mongols, and the Balkar Turks from the Caucasian. He also deported the Crimean Tatars and the Volga Germans. Beria organized the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico and massacred Polish Army officers in the Katyn Forest in 1940