The 'North Caucasian' Chekist who opened the mass operations in West Siberia
A stenographic record survives of his briefing to subordinates in the summer of 1937, as Order No. 00447 was being prepared: 'The limit for the first operation is 11,000... You may take 12,000, or 13,000, or 15,000. I am not restricting you to that figure. You may take 20,000 in the first category.'
A Chekist born into a Jewish family in Kiev, originally surnamed Korol and often written Mironov-Korol, he made his career in the North Caucasus under Yevdokimov as one of the 'North Caucasians' and was Frinovsky's closest associate. As head of the West Siberian NKVD he opened the mass operations of summer 1937, chairing the regional troika formed with prosecutor Barkov and party secretary Eikhe and telling his men not to feel bound by their quotas. Transferred in August 1937 to Mongolia as Soviet plenipotentiary, he organized the Mongolian purge in which some eight thousand lamas perished, then headed the Second Eastern Department of the foreign affairs commissariat until his arrest in January 1939; placed on the execution list sent to Stalin on 16 January 1940, he was shot.
Career Timeline
- 1914–1917Russian army officer in the First World War
- 1918–1921Joined the Red Army; fought in the Civil War
- 1921–1931Cheka and OGPU officer in the North Caucasus
- 1931–1933Deputy OGPU plenipotentiary for Kazakhstan
- 1933–1936Head of the Dnepropetrovsk oblast GPU, then NKVD
- 1936–1937Head of the West Siberian NKVD
- 1937Chaired the West Siberian troika; awarded the Order of Lenin
- 1937–1938Soviet plenipotentiary envoy to Mongolia
- 1938–1939Head of the NKID Second Eastern Department
- 1939–1940Arrested and shot