Leonid Zakovsky

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Leonid Mikhailovich Zakovsky (Latvian: Leonīds Zakovskis; Russian: Леони́д Миха́йлович Зако́вский; born Henriks Štubis; 1894–August 29, 1938) was a Latvian Bolshevik revolutionary and a high-ranking Soviet security official who led the country’s secret police at various times (Cheka, OGPU, NKVD).

Early life and rise
- Born in 1894 in Kreis Hasenpoth, in the Courland region of the Russian Empire to a Latvian family.
- Arrested in 1913, convicted for belonging to an anarchist group, and exiled to northern Russia. He later claimed to have been a Bolshevik since 1913.
- After the February Revolution, moved to Petrograd, helped guard the Bolshevik headquarters at the Smolny Institute, and led a detachment that seized Petrograd’s telephone exchange during the revolution.
- Became one of the founding members of the Cheka (Soviet secret police) in December 1917 and served in security roles for the duration of the Soviet state’s early security services.

Key roles and actions
- During the Russian Civil War, he helped suppress anti-communist uprisings in several cities.
- In 1926 he was appointed head of the OGPU in Siberia and oversaw security during Stalin’s push to seize grain in 1928, a step toward forced collectivization.
- He also led the “troika” system, which administered extrajudicial punishments against peasants resisting policy changes. In late 1929–1930, the troika handed down hundreds of cases, with many executions and deportations.
- In 1932 Zakovsky became head of the OGPU in the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
- In December 1934, after the assassination of Sergei Kirov, he was moved to the Leningrad NKVD, where he helped oversee security operations and trials related to perceived enemies of the regime.
- He played a role in mass deportations of people in Leningrad and was involved in notable purges there, working alongside Andrei Zhdanov.

Recognition and purges within the party
- In 1936 he was promoted to Commissar of State Security, First Rank, and was awarded the Order of the Red Star.
- He delivered a harsh critique of former security chief Genrikh Yagoda in 1937, signaling the start of intensified purges in Leningrad.
- He planned further high-profile trials of leading Leningrad communists, though many of these plans ended up in the broader terror of the era. The methods he described in private were cited in later discussions of fabricated anti-Soviet plots.

Final years and death
- In January 1938 Zakovsky was transferred to Moscow as First Deputy head of the NKVD, effectively the second-in-command to Nikolai Yezhov.
- He was involved in internal purges, including actions against rivals within the NKVD and the security apparatus.
- During the Great Purge, he was dismissed, arrested in April 1938, accused of conspiracy and Latvian nationalist ties, and subjected to torture.
- Zakovsky was executed on August 29, 1938, at the Kommunarka shooting ground near Moscow.