People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1886–1938 ✕ Executed

Founding deputy chairman of the Cheka, Honorary Chekist No. 2

"He told me that he suffered physical pain every time he signed a death sentence. I believe it was true. There was a strong streak of sentimentality in his nature, but he was a fanatic as far as the clash between Bolshevism and capitalism was concerned, and he pursued his Bolshevik aims with a sense of duty which was relentless." — British diplomat Robert Bruce Lockhart, recalling his 1918 interrogation by Peters

Latvian-born Bolshevik revolutionary and key architect of Soviet state security. He joined the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1904, took part in the 1905 revolution, and emigrated to London in 1909, active in the British Socialist Party. During the October Revolution he served on the Petrograd Military-Revolutionary Committee and after the revolution became the founding deputy chairman of the Cheka, laying the institutional foundations of the security apparatus. During the July 1918 Left SR uprising he served as acting chairman; later, as head of the Eastern Department of GPU/OGPU, he directed anti-Basmachi operations in Central Asia. Arrested in 1937 during the Great Purge, he was shot in 1938 and rehabilitated in 1956.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1888–1938 ✕ Executed

Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Cheka and theorist of class-based Red Terror

“We are annihilating the bourgeoisie as a class. The first question we must ask is: what class does the accused belong to, what is his origin, upbringing and profession? These must determine his fate.” — Red Terror journal, 1 November 1918

A Soviet revolutionary and writer of Latvian origin, born Jānis Sudrabs. From July to November 1918 he chaired the Cheka and Military Tribunal of the 5th Army on the Eastern Front, and from 1919 to 1921 he chaired the All-Ukrainian Cheka while personally directing the Kiev Cheka. On 1 November 1918 the Kazan journal Krasny Terror carried his article "We are annihilating the bourgeoisie as a class," which held that class origin, upbringing and profession alone should decide a suspect's fate, the clearest theoretical statement of class-based Red Terror. The sources record a reputation for personal cruelty, corroborated by the Denikin commission's materials on the All-Ukrainian Cheka and by Lācis's own statements.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1894–1938 ✕ Executed

The Latvian Chekist who built Dalstroy and colonised Kolyma with forced labour for gold

Berzin landed at Nagaev Bay in February 1932 and built Magadan on empty tundra. Shalamov wrote: 'Berzin tried — quite successfully — to solve the problem of colonising a harsh land while simultaneously solving the problems of reforging and isolating prisoners.'

A Latvian peasant's son who studied painting at Berlin's Royal Academy, Berzin joined the Bolsheviks through the Latvian Riflemen in the First World War. In 1918, on Cheka orders, he posed as a disaffected officer to penetrate Lockhart's anti-Soviet conspiracy, securing the plotters' arrest. From 1926 he directed OGPU prison-labour construction of the Vishera chemical complex, then in 1931 became Dalstroy's first director, tasked with extracting Kolyma's gold and building Magadan from tundra. He pioneered a camp economy combining wages, early release, and family resettlement with brutal production quotas. Arrested at the Great Purge's height in late 1937, he was shot in 1938.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1894–1938 ✕ Executed

The Hammer of Leningrad

In his final plea: "Please take into account that I slandered a great many honest people during the investigation... About myself I have nothing to say, because I know my fate well."

A Latvian Bolshevik who rose through Siberian and Belarusian security posts to become the NKVD chief of Leningrad and an enforcer of the Great Terror. He directed the Kirov murder investigation, deported over 11,000 'former people', fabricated the 'Belarusian National Centre' case, and organised large-scale national operations targeting Latvians. Promoted to Yezhov's deputy NKVD commissar and Moscow NKVD chief in early 1938, he was arrested within months by the same apparatus, shot, and posthumously denied rehabilitation.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1937–1991 ✕ Suicide, shooting order disputed

From Latvian KGB chief to USSR interior minister, a guardian of order shattered in the coup he backed

He took his own life with a pistol in his apartment on 22 August 1991, with an arrest warrant issued. The order of the shots is disputed: prosecutors held he fired first, while Yavlinsky's account and the later investigation concluded his wife fired last.

Born into a family of Latvian communists and a graduate of the Riga Polytechnical Institute, he rose through Komsomol and party work to chair the Latvian KGB in 1980–1984 and lead the Communist Party of Latvia in 1984–1989. As USSR interior minister from December 1990 he pursued a hard line on law and order, and in August 1991 joined the State Emergency Committee (GKChP), mobilizing the interior apparatus behind it. When the coup collapsed he took his own life with a pistol in his Moscow apartment on 22 August 1991.