Genrikh Yagoda

Born to a Jewish household in 1891, Gerikh Grigoryevich Yagoda is a man without a clear history until his meteoric rise in the NKVD (Cheka in the years of the October Revolution) to becoming the second deputy of Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka. Having been raised as a statistician and working several non-related jobs, he has been an active revolutionary since age 14, and a loyal Bolshevik since age 16, or so the official record goes. There have always been rumors and whispers (like many other things regarding him) that this past has been forged to hide the fact that the NKVD chief was not a member of the Bolsheviks until 1917, but so far neither the evidence nor the accusers have been able to come into the limelight.

The most certain thing about his history is that he has been an effective figure in NKVD ever since 1924 and secured Bukharin 's leadership by working against the prominent old Bolshevik Joseph Stalin during the power struggle in 1928. Putting Bukharin as the General Secretary of the Union, Yagoda's influence only grew, helped by personal sympathies to each other's politics. Arguing for a more relaxed version of the NEP. he has been accused of revisionism and being a traitor yet his effort (and connections) he put into the NKVD and the support of some figure within the Party has allowed him to thwart off every single of them successfully. Seeing the state control as the reason for the stagnation of the economy and being distrustful of the reformists, Yagoda promotes a transitional approach to economics, one that borrows heavily from Bukharin's theories but interprets them to allow foreign capital into the USSR to develop productive forces. Currently being the Minister of Interior of the USSR, Yagoda has the NKVD under his control and enjoys some favor from the aging General Secretary. His controversial plan regarding economics and the certainly increased influence of the NKVD in politics isn' t appealing to many in the Party, yet with his power base the most secure one within all successor candidates, he has a chance to acquire the position of General Secretary for himself if he can play his cards right.

Only the unfolding events will show if the Iron Hand of the Party shall win, or if his ambitions will be his downfall.