Filed with 60.23 History · Related: 60.13 Wars · 60.14 Colonialism
- Yagoda greatly expanded the use of prison labor to assist with the building of the Berezniki Works chemical plant and other projects. From 1929 to 1930, the number of prison laborers in OGPU camps expanded from 22,848 to 155,000, and after November 1930 became known as the Main Camp Administration, or GULAG system.
- On 10 July 1934, two months after Menzhinsky’s death, Joseph Stalin appointed Yagoda People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, a position that included oversight of both the regular and the secret police, the NKVD.
- The Red Army high command was not spared and its ranks were thinned by Yagoda, as a precursor to the later and more extensive purge in the Soviet military. More than a quarter of a million people were arrested during the 1934–1935 period; the GULAG system was vastly expanded under his stewardship, and penal labor became a major developmental resource in the Soviet economy.