29 Facts About Yefim Yevdokimov

Yefim Yevdokimov was a key figure in the Red Terror, the Great Purge and dekulakization that saw millions of people executed and deported.

Yefim Yevdokimov was arrested on 9 November 1938 and executed 2 February 1940.

Yefim Yevdokimov was born either in Perm, in European Russia, or in Kopal, Semirechye Oblast, Russian Empire.

Yefim Yevdokimov began working at the age of 14 as a train coupler, then as a clerk.

Yefim Yevdokimov was arrested in 1907, and sentenced to four years of hard labor, commuted to three years in prison due to being a minor.

Yefim Yevdokimov participated in revolutionary activities as a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, an anarchist and a member of the Socialist Maximalist Party.

Yefim Yevdokimov led the arrests and investigation into the case of the Headquarters of the Volunteer Army of the Moscow region.

Yefim Yevdokimov took part in carrying out mass terror in Crimea after its capture by the Bolsheviks.

In 1923, Yefim Yevdokimov was appointed head of the OGPU in the North Caucasus region, based in Rostov.

Yefim Yevdokimov was based in this territory for the next 15 years.

Yefim Yevdokimov worked in senior positions in the GPU-OGPU of the USSR, as head of the Secret Political Department, which was engaged in the fight against political opponents.

In 1927, Yefim Yevdokimov claimed to be close to uncovering a network of saboteurs who were undermining industrial production in south Russia, directed, he claimed, from abroad.

The head of the OGPU, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky reputedly did not believe him and threatened to have him arrested unless he produced solid evidence, in which he was backed by the head of the USSR government, Alexei Rykov, but while Joseph Stalin was on holiday in Sochi, Yefim Yevdokimov met him, repeated his allegations, and won his support.

Yefim Yevdokimov was in charge of forcing the defendants to confess and ensuring they would not withdraw their confessions in court.

Yefim Yevdokimov was barred from further promotion within the OGPU for as long as it was controlled by Menzhinsky and his deputy, Genrikh Yagoda.

Orlov believed that Stalin was planning Kirov's assassination, which Yefim Yevdokimov was to have organised.

Yefim Yevdokimov was the first career officer from the OGPU to be appointed to a party post of that seniority.

In September 1937, the territory was split again, and Yefim Yevdokimov was designated First Secretary of the Rostov region.

Yefim Yevdokimov was one of very few local party bosses who were trusted to conduct the Great Purge without outside interference.

In January 1937, Yefim Yevdokimov was appointed First Secretary of the Azov-Black Sea kraikom, after the incumbent, Boris Sheboldayev, was sacked for allowing former oppositionists to hold jobs in the region.

Yefim Yevdokimov was set a target to have 14,000 people arrested, from a population of just over 5.6 million.

One of those arrested during Yefim Yevdokimov's purge was Pyotr Lugovoi, secretary of Veshenskaya district party committee who was a close friend and near neighbour of Mikhail Sholokhov, who complained to Stalin, and refused to join a writers' delegation until his friend was released.

When Yefim Yevdokimov fobbed him off, Sholokhov wrote to Stalin in February 1938 denouncing Yefim Yevdokimov as a "crafty old fox", who was either hopeless, or an enemy.

In spring 1938, possibility because of Sholokhov's complaints, Stalin appears to have decided that Yefim Yevdokimov had ordered too many arrests.

On 4 May 1938, Yefim Yevdokimov was transferred to Moscow as Deputy People's Commissar for Water Transport, under Yezhov, who had been appointed People's Commissar, while temporarily retaining his post as head of the NKVD.

Yefim Yevdokimov was accused of having plotted with Yezhov and others to kill Stalin after they had received news of Beria's appointment.

Yefim Yevdokimov finally broke down on 13 April 1939, while being interrogated under torture by Beria's deputy, Vsevolod Merkulov, and confessed to having plotted to assassinate Stalin and others.

At his trial, on 2 February 1940, Yefim Yevdokimov withdrew his previous confession, asserting:.

Yefim Yevdokimov was sentenced to death and shot the same day, at the Kommunarka shooting ground.