Old Bolshevik who led the Cheka Special Department, building the Red Terror in the North and the earliest Soviet camp system
“I suffer innocently. Please believe me. Time will testify to the truth.” — from his letter to Andreyev from Lefortovo prison, 1939, read aloud by Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress Secret Speech in 1956.
A Bolshevik military organiser who became head of the Cheka's Military Section (later the Special Department) in September 1918, he directed the Red Terror across the Northern Front: executing thousands in Arkhangelsk and Vologda, establishing the Kholmogory extermination camp, and closing the Solovetsky Monastery to found one of the earliest Soviet forced-labour camps. His wife Olga's sisters married Nikolai Podvoisky and were the mother of Artur Artuzov, placing Kedrov at the centre of a Chekist family network. After leaving the Cheka in 1921 due to ill health, he drifted through peripheral economic and health posts before his arrest in 1939; acquitted in July 1941, he was shot on Beria's order in Saratov that November.
Career Timeline
- 1901–1905Joined RSDLP; organised worker detachments in Kostroma; supplied arms for Moscow uprising
- 1912–1916Swiss exile; completed medical degree; close to Lenin
- 1917Military Organisation member; editor of Soldatskaya Pravda; Commissar for Demobilisation
- 1918.9–1919Head of Cheka Military Section → Special Department (directed army purges during Civil War)
- 1920–1921Cheka Plenipotentiary, Northern Region; established Kholmogory, Pertominsk and Solovetsky camps
- 1927–1931Chairman of Red Sport International
- 1939–1941Arrested and tortured; acquitted but held and shot on Beria's order
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905supplied weapons for Moscow uprising
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCheka Special Department head
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeTarget of wartime extrajudicial executionArrested in 1939 and acquitted but not released, he was shot at Saratov on Beria's order in 1941.