Aleksey Alekseyevich Nasedkin

Алексей Алексеевич Наседкин

1897–1940 ✕ Executed · never rehabilitated

Smolensk NKVD chief who fabricated the 'Latvian National Centre' case and launched the Latvian operation

He asked Yezhov for permission to arrest 500 Latvians; Yezhov replied, "Nonsense, I will clear it with the Central Committee — we need to bleed the Latvians; arrest no fewer than 1,500–2,000, they are all nationalists."

A Moscow-born worker who joined the OGPU in 1927 after Red Army service and a stint as party secretary in Gosplan. As head of the Smolensk NKVD in 1937, he fabricated the 'Latvian National Centre' case and presented it to Yezhov, securing the reply 'arrest no fewer than 1,500–2,000, they are all nationalists': the exchange that launched the Latvian operation across the Soviet Union. Promoted to People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Belorussia in May 1938, he introduced daily arrest quotas per district department, sanctioned torture by written order, and killed thousands from German, Polish, Latvian and Lithuanian communities before being caught in Beria's NKVD purge, arrested in December 1938, shot in January 1940, and never rehabilitated.