Russia Court Refuses to Rehabilitate Stalin’s Henchman Yagoda
Russia Court Refuses to Rehabilitate Stalin’s Henchman Yagoda
No rehabilitation of Stalinism in Putin’s Russia – on the contrary
Russia’s highest court on Thursday refused to legally rehabilitate Genrikh Yagoda, the head of the Soviet-era NKVD secret police who oversaw Stalinist purges in the 1930s and set up the gulag forced labor camps.
Yagoda ran the NKVD between 1934 and 1936, was dismissed in 1937 and executed in 1938 for treason and conspiracy, becoming one of millions of victims of the Soviet system that he himself helped establish under Joseph Stalin.
The context: The accusation that Kremlin is intent on rehabilitating Stalin could not be further from the truth. Stalin’s policies remain condemned and his henchmen are refused rehabilitation granted to victims of Stalinist-era repression.