From North Caucasus NKVD chief to government protection head, an executor of the Great Terror
In November 1938, government protection chief Dagin was arrested in Beria's internal NKVD purge. The guardian of the Kremlin was led to the Lubyanka's basement cells.
Yevdokimov's trusted operative, Dagin directed mass arrests in the North Caucasus NKVD during the Great Terror. As head of government protection, he guarded the Kremlin leadership, until Beria had him arrested in 1938 and shot in 1940.
Career Timeline
- 1915–1919Tsarist army service, Red Guard and underground party work
- 1919–1924Key Cheka posts in Nikolaev, Kherson and Crimea
- 1924–1934Rose through North Caucasus OGPU, heading Terek regional security
- 1934–1937Head of NKVD, North Caucasus (Ordzhonikidze) Krai
- 1937.4–1937.6Head of NKVD, Gorky Oblast
- 1937–1938Head of 1st Department (Government Protection), GUGB NKVD
- 1938–1940Arrested, tried and shot
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign Interventionkey Cheka positions
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationHead of NKVD of North Caucasus
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeNKVD chief for North Caucasus and GorkyAs head of NKVD for North Caucasus Krai (1934–1937) and Gorky Oblast (1937), he directly led mass arrests and executions. He was a key figure in Yevdokimov's North Caucasus group and one of the regional executors of the Yezhovshchina.
North Caucasus NKVD and the Yevdokimov Faction
The longest chapter of Dagin's state security career was his thirteen years in the North Caucasus, from 1924 to 1937. He began as deputy head of the Terek provincial OGPU, rose through the ranks as assistant and then deputy plenipotentiary of the OGPU for the North Caucasus Krai in the early 1930s, and with the NKVD reorganisation of 1934 became head of the NKVD for the North Caucasus (later Ordzhonikidze) Krai.
Throughout this period, Dagin was one of the key trusted men of Yefim Yevdokimov and what became known as the 'North Caucasus faction'. Yevdokimov, a hardliner with Stalin's confidence, built an independent security power base in the region staffed by a network of Chekists. Dagin served as a loyal executor: he directed the suppression of peasant resistance during collectivisation and, later, the mass arrest operations of the Great Terror.
In January 1934, Dagin attended the 17th All-Union Communist Party Congress, the so-called 'Congress of Victors', as a full delegate from the North Caucasus party organisation. In November 1935, he was awarded the rank of Commissar of State Security 3rd Class, a senior grade within the NKVD hierarchy. In 1937, he received the Order of Lenin for 'exemplary and selfless fulfilment of the most important government assignments', effectively a decoration for the mass arrest and execution operations he had carried out across the North Caucasus at the height of the Terror.
By mid-1937, however, the Yevdokimov faction began losing Stalin's and Yezhov's confidence. Dagin was transferred sideways to Gorky Oblast and then to the government protection department, a move that reflected Moscow's effort to break up the North Caucasus security apparatus's independent influence. When Beria took control of the NKVD the following year, the old Yevdokimov network faced a comprehensive purge.