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Execution of Boris Rodos - Brutal Torturer during Stalin's Reign of Terror. The 1930s, the Soviet Union. After investigation reveals that some members of the former Bolshevik party question Stalin’s authority and that there is a network of party members supposedly working against him, Stalin believes anyone with ties to the Bolsheviks or Lenin’s government is a threat to his leadership and needs to go. He initiates the Great Purge which starts with the arrests of party members, Bolsheviks, and members of the Red Army and then grows to include Soviet peasants, members of the intelligentsia, and members of certain nationalities. By 1938, however, the oppression has become so extensive that it is damaging the infrastructure, economy and even the armed forces of the Soviet state, prompting Stalin to wind the purge down. In November 1938 Lavrentiy Beria succeeds Nikolai Yezhov as head of Russian Secret Service NKVD, which coordinated the purge, and easing of the repression that begun under Yezhov. Beria promotes new officers who will become notorious for brutally torturing prisoners during interrogations. One of them is Boris Rodos. Boris Veniaminovich Rodos, the son of a Jewish tailor, was born on the 22nd of June 1905 in Melitopol then part of the Russian Empire. In 1921 he graduated from elementary school and then immediately went to work in a private fruit shop as a packer. He then sold cigarettes and in 1924 Rodos completed a six-month course for tractor mechanics, but did not work in this job but instead got a job as an office worker in the Melitopol. He soon joined Komsomol, the Young Communist League, but was expelled in 1930 for attempted rape. One year later he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and, around the same time, became an officer of the Joint State Political Directorate - OGPU - in Ukraine. OGPU was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1934. The agency operated inside and outside the Soviet Union, persecuting political criminals and opponents of the Bolsheviks such as Soviet dissidents, anti-communists and White émigrés who were Russians who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and Russian Civil War between 1917 and 1923. The OGPU was based in the Lubyanka Building in Moscow and in 1934 it was reincorporated as the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD in 1934. At this time, the NKVD, Russian secret service, was headed by Genrikh Yagoda. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal with Naftaly Frenkel, using penal labor from the gulag system, during which 12,000–25,000 forced laborers died. Genrikh Yagoda also supervised arrests, show trials, and executions of the Old Bolsheviks such as Lev Kamenev who during Lenin's final illness in 1923–24, was the acting leader of the Soviet Union, forming a triumvirate with Grigory Zinoviev and Joseph Stalin which led to Leon Trotsky's downfall. Yagoda also supervised the downfall of Grigory Zinoviev - a Soviet revolutionary and politician who was a close associate of Vladimir Lenin and during the 1920s belonged to the most influential figures in the Soviet leadership. These were the climactic events of the Great Purge which followed later. In March 1937, Yagoda was arrested on Stalin's orders. At this time, NKVD was headed by Nikolai Yezhov who had replaced Yagoda one year sooner. Under Nikolai Yezhov, the organization carried out the Great Purge which was the imprisonment or execution of a huge number, possibly over a million, of citizens throughout the Soviet Union as alleged “enemies of the people” between August 1936 and March 1938. Upon Stalin’s rise to power, some members of the former Bolshevik party began to question his authority. An investigation that revealed a network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of Stalin's rivals. By the mid-1930s, Stalin believed anyone with ties to the Bolsheviks or Lenin’s government was a threat to his leadership and needed to go. The Great Purge started with the arrests of party members, Bolsheviks, and members of the Red Army and then ... Join World History channel and get access to benefits: Disclaimer: All opinions and comments below are from members of the public and do not reflect the views of World History channel. We do not accept promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on attributes such as: race, nationality, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation. World History has right to review the comments and delete them if they are deemed inappropriate. ► CLICK the SUBSCRIBE button for more interesting clips: #ww2 #worldwar2videos #worldhistory
