Lev Leonidovich (Aronovich) Shvartsman
Лев Леонидович (Аронович) Шварцман
1907–1955
✕ Executed · firing squad
MGB's most brutal interrogator, killer of Blyukher, Babel, and Meyerhold
After his death sentence he wrote: "Shoot me with five explosive bullets — a single ordinary bullet won't kill me." The torturer who had mocked his victims' pain trembled before his own.
Colonel in the Soviet MGB, notorious as the most brutal interrogator in the history of the state security organs. Entered NKVD during the Great Purge (1937-38), beat Marshal Blyukher to death under interrogation, and interrogated Isaac Babel and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Severed General Grigory Shtern's right eye with an electric cable during questioning. Arrested in 1951 in connection with the Doctors' Plot, executed by shooting in 1955.
Career Timeline
- 1925Joined Komsomol, worked as newspaper reporter in Kiev
- 1929Transferred to Moscow, worked for Moskovski Komsomolets
- 1935Recruited into NKVD
- 1938NKVD interrogator — tortured Blyukher, Kosarev; interrogated Babel and Meyerhold
- 1941Deputy head of NKGB Investigation Department
- 1951Arrested in connection with Doctors' Plot
- 1955Sentenced to death and executed by firing squad
Related historical events
The Meyerhold Torture: "I Squealed Like a Dog"
In 1939, Vsevolod Meyerhold, then one of the most influential theatre directors in the world, was arrested at the age of 65. Shvartsman and Boris Rodos were assigned to interrogate him. Shortly before his execution, Meyerhold wrote an account of the torture that was preserved in the KGB archives:
"I was made to lie down and then beaten on the soles of my feet and my spine with a rubber strap... For the next few days, when those parts of my legs were covered with extensive internal haemorrhaging, they again beat the red-blue-and-yellow bruises with the strap and the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling hot water was being poured on those sensitive areas... The intolerable physical and emotional pain caused my eyes to weep unending streams of tears. Lying face down on the floor, I discovered that I could wriggle, twist and squeal like a dog when its master whips it."
Isaac Babel was arrested at the same time and interrogated by Shvartsman and Rodos; it is presumed he endured similar treatment. Meyerhold's testimony survives as a rare first-person account of the Great Purge's machinery of torture from the victim's perspective.