Yagoda's chief of the Secret Political Department
At the February–March 1937 Central Committee Plenum, Stalin interrupted Yezhov's report: "What about Molchanov? What's his fate? Is he arrested or not?" Yezhov replied: "Yes, arrested, Comrade Stalin, he's sitting."
Yagoda's right hand at the OGPU/NKVD Secret Political Department, he directed repression of oppositionists, clergy, and peasants. He oversaw the Ryutin arrests, the post-Kirov mass arrests, and the first Moscow show trial. Demoted to Belorussia after Yagoda fell, he was arrested and executed in 1937.
Career Timeline
- 1919–1921Chairman of the Grozny Cheka
- 1925–1931Chief of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk provincial GPU
- 1931–1936Chief of the Secret Political Department, OGPU and NKVD
- 1936–1937People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Belorussian SSR
- 1937Arrested and executed
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionCheka chairman
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationHead of Secret Political Department
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeEnforcer turned targetAs chief of the Secret Political Department he ran the Ryutin arrests, the Kirov stream and the investigative preparation of the August 1936 trial, then became one of the first senior officers taken when Yagoda's apparatus was purged, and was shot in 1937.
As Chief of the Secret Political Department
From 1931 to 1936, Molchanov headed the Secret Political Department (Секретно-политический отдел, SPO), the most pivotal division of the OGPU-NKVD. The department was tasked with monitoring, developing, and arresting all real and imagined opponents of the Stalinist regime: peasants resisting collectivization, Trotskyists, supporters of the 'Right Opposition' (Bukharinites), clergy, monarchists, former activists of non-Bolshevik parties, national movements, members of foreign communist parties, and others.
Under his command, the SPO fabricated numerous cases. The 'Workers' Opposition' case of A. G. Shlyapnikov and S. P. Medvedev, the 'All-Union Trotskyist Center,' the 'Red Professors' case of A. N. Slepkov and D. P. Maretsky, and the G. I. Safarov–P. A. Zalutsky group case were all concocted during this period. In October 1932, he personally directed the arrests of the Ryutin group, and at the end of that year developed the case against I. N. Smirnov's organization. After the December 1934 assassination of Kirov, he was broadly involved in the mass arrest operation known as the 'Kirov stream' (кировский поток) and the fabrication of the 1935–1936 trials.
Yet in mid-1935, according to Yezhov's testimony, Molchanov, together with Yagoda, resisted 'uncovering a wide-scale Trotskyite-Zinovievite conspiracy.' First Deputy People's Commissar Agranov testified that Molchanov insisted 'there is no serious Trotskyist underground in Moscow.' Stalin, dissatisfied, transferred control over the preparation of the first Moscow Trial to Yezhov. Shortly after Yagoda's removal as People's Commissar, Molchanov was reassigned to Belorussia, and his assistant, Major of State Security I. V. Shtein, shot himself in his office.