Early Life and Career
Yagoda was born in Rybinsk into a Jewish family. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1907. Contrary to the rumors invented by himself, Yagoda was never a pharmacist but in fact an apprentice engraver in Yakov Sverdlov's father's workshop. Yagoda subsequently married Sverdlov's niece Ida Averbach which permitted him, after the October Revolution of 1917, to be promoted through the ranks of the Cheka (the NKVD's predecessor), becoming Felix Dzerzhinsky's second deputy in September 1923. After Dzerzhinsky's appointment as chairman of the Supreme Council of National Economy in January 1924, Yagoda became the real manager of the Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie, as the deputy chairman Vyacheslav Menzhinsky had little authority because of his serious illness. The troika Grigory Zinoviev-Lev Kamenev-Joseph Stalin wanted a symbolic direction represented by Felix Dzerzhinsky and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky and an effective direction represented by Yagoda who was neither a people's commissar or a central committee member to ensure that the GPU remained loyal to the party. In 1931, Yagoda was demoted to second deputy chairman.
As deputy head of the GPU, Yagoda organized the building of the White Sea – Baltic Canal using forced labor from the Gulag system at breakneck speed between 1931 and 1933 at the cost of huge casualties. For his contribution to the canal’s construction he was later awarded the Order of Lenin. The construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal was also started under his watch but only completed after his fall by his successor Nikolai Yezhov.
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