Yezhov's head of secretariat who went on to sit on the Rostov troika
Born in St Petersburg to a Jewish family, he joined the Bolsheviks in November 1917. From 1920 he served in the North Caucasus Cheka and OGPU, heading the Chechen-Grozny oblast branch among other posts; after Moscow and Kalinin oblasts he became the people's commissar's operational secretary in 1936 and head of the NKVD secretariat from November. In that post he took part in the 'investigation' of the intelligence chief Artuzov, arrested in 1937. From August 1937, as NKVD chief of Azov-Black Sea krai and then Rostov oblast, he sat on the special troika. He was arrested in March 1938 and died in prison on 27 September, presumably from torture. He was never rehabilitated.
Activities and affiliations
- Security, intelligence and policing · Soviet Union