Stalin, Volume 1

Bearing Dzierzynski’s body, July 1926. Right to left: Unszlicht out front, Yenukidze, Bukharin, Rykov, Stalin, and Voroshilov (in cap).

OGPU HIERARCHS: TOP LEFT: Wiaczesław Mezynski, who replaced Dzierzynski but was himself very ill. TOP RIGHT: Jenokhom Jehuda, known as Genrikh Yagoda (new first deputy chief), Stalin’s secret agent in the secret police. BOTTOM LEFT: Artur Fraucci, known as Artuzov (head of counterintelligence), Yagoda’s nemesis. Dzierzynski called Artuzov “the absolute cleanest comrade.” BOTTOM RIGHT: Yefim Yevdokimov, North Caucasus OGPU chief, who, while visiting Stalin at the dacha in Sochi, brought the gift of fabricated industrial sabotage.

A caricature mocking Grigory Zinoviev’s supposedly opportunistic criticisms of the party’s New Economic Policy, December 1925. By Valery Mezhlauk. Caption: “Masha, tonight is the Central Committee plenum; take out the kulak and NEPman puppets and, after I return, cover them again with mothballs, we won’t need them until autumn.”

Stalin with newly installed Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov, who replaced Zinoviev, Smolny, April 1926. Left to right: Nikolai Antipov, new Leningrad second secretary; Stalin; Kirov; Nikolai Shvernik, outgoing Leningrad second secretary, moving to the Central Committee apparatus; Fyodor Sobinov, known as Nikolai Komarov, head of the Leningrad soviet.