Chekist who ran the OGPU–NKVD economic directorate and handled the Industrial Party and Metro-Vickers cases
Born Leib Kagan into a Jewish family at Pyriatyn in Poltava province, he passed through the Bund to the Bolsheviks in 1918 and entered the OGPU Economic Directorate in 1924, where with Georgy Prokofiev he fabricated a series of economic 'wrecking' cases. Head of the OGPU Economic Directorate from 1931 and of the NKVD economic department from 1934, he was one of Yagoda's closest subordinates and helped fabricate the Trotskyist–Zinovievist Centre case of 1936. Moved to head counter-intelligence that November, he was arrested in June 1937, testified against former colleagues for more than a year, and was sentenced to death and shot at Kommunarka on 29 August 1938. In 2013 the Russian Supreme Court ruled him not subject to rehabilitation.
Also known as: Leib Kagan
Activities and affiliations
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1916–1917
Social movements and organizing
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1918–1937
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
Security, intelligence and policing -
1924–1937
Soviet Union state institutionsState security agenciesMain
Security, intelligence and policing
Career Timeline
- 1916–1917Member of the Bund
- 1918Joined the Bolsheviks; political officer in the Red Army
- 1919.02Chairman of the Pyriatyn district Cheka; head of the Poltava tribunal prosecutors
- 1923–1924Deputy people's commissar of justice of the Turkestan ASSR; adviser at the Soviet consulate in Bukhara
- 1924.05–1930.02Head of the 5th section, then assistant head of the OGPU Economic Directorate
- 1930–1931OGPU plenipotentiary for Central Asia
- 1931.08–1934.07Head of the OGPU Economic Directorate
- 1934.07–1936.11Head of the Economic Department of the NKVD GUGB
- 1936.11–1937.06Head of the Counter-intelligence (3rd) Department of the NKVD GUGB
- 1937.04Led the NKVD special task force sent to Siberia and the Far East
- 1937.06.14–1938.08.29Arrested and shot