Word: nkvd
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Beria's benefactor, Kirov, had been sensationally murdered about this time, and the Soviet Union was on the verge of a political bloodbath. The instrument of the purge set off by the Kirov assassination was Genrikh Yagoda, a leather-capped roughneck who was then head of NKVD (successor to the Cheka). Yagoda did a thorough job and, in due time, he got his reward: he was charged, like thousands of his victims, with being an enemy of the people, imperialist spy, etc. Yagoda was the third of the great cops, following Felix Dzerzhinsky, the lean, cat-eyed Polish aristocrat...
...Soviet tanks, Maxim heavy machine guns and other modern weapons, they were organized into combat teams and an army group: some were assigned to a fleet of 31 armed ships, others to flight training in Yak-17s Behind the "Vopos" rose the secret police, some 30,000 organized in NKVD style by a veteran (60) Red of the Spanish civil war and Moscow fraternity named Wilhelm Zaisser...
Gone was the old Vishinsky, the scolding, venomous NKVD prosecutor with his accusations of forgery, cannibalism and "blood-spattered dollars." In the General Assembly last week, the new Vishinsky cooed that there had been a "misunderstanding." "Life goes forward," he said. "Situations and relationships [change] in accordance with events ... It has been said that the Soviet representatives keep talking about their peace-loving nature . . . but 'what about deeds?' Well, have there not been a few deeds, at least during the last month? . . . Where are yours?" Let us, proposed Vishinsky, "dig the tunnel of friendship from both sides...
Back in Moscow, Mark Surov is assigned a minor Kremlin post. His heart has turned away from the inhuman regime, but what to do next he does not know. The great purges are beginning; fear floods the city. When Mark invites friends to a party, he must inform the NKVD so that it can send an extra guest...
...which have at least fictional verisimilitude. Stalin's bosom friend, Ordjonikidze, poisoned by Stalin's orders, shouts into a telephone as he lies dying: "Koba, I go, but you will follow me."- Red Army Marshal Tukhachevsky refuses to confess, and is felled by a bullet from the NKVD chief, Nikolai Yezhov. Red Army Marshal Blucher is called before the Politburo, where Stalin praises him as a genius. Marshal Voroshilov sends Blucher a look, as if to say: "Deny it. Say you haven't any genius...