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Genrikh Yagoda was a Soviet official responsible for the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal using slave labor. He was also the first head of the People's Commisariat for Internal Affairs (abbreviated NKVD), and was thus responsible for taking the actions that directly sparked the Great Purge as well as for the Ukrainian famine of 1932 to 1933.
However, Yagoda wasn't where the buck stopped. While he was responsible for the implementation of various policies, he wasn't responsible for those policies being chosen in the first place. He could have been less murderous in his methods (BOOOOOOring), but that probably simply would have gotten him replaced by someone else altogether. In fact, that's what happened: when Yagoda sent a memo outlining foreign response to the Great Purge, Stalin took it as a sign of weakness, replaced Yagoda with Nikolai Yezhov, then had Yagoda and his wife executed.
This isn't to let Yagoda off the hook. He actively made decisions in his life that put him in a place where he could only be ruthless and murderous, and sympathy for the devil isn't required here. However, it does explain why Yagoda is much less well-known than, for example, Adolf Hitler. Without Yagoda, the Ukrainians still would have starved, the zeks still would have been worked to death and the show trials still would have been performed because, fundamentally, that's what Josef Stalin, the unquestioned ruler of the Soviet Union at the time, wanted to happen. To use a metaphor, Stalin was the engine, Yagoda was at most a tire.
So comparing Yagoda to Hitler is a bit of a case of apples to oranges. Both were evil men, but Hitler ran his show while Yagoda played a highly replaceable supporting role in his. A more analogous man in Nazi Germany would be Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, who is generally better known in the West than is Yagoda.
what the fuck you talking about!!!: Stalin was a JEW! Of course the JEW committed Genocide, and therefore Germanies defence against the JEW was Rightful.
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[–] StBlops2cel_is_Lord 3 points 0 points 3 points (+3|-3) ago (edited ago)
Genrikh Yagoda was a Soviet official responsible for the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal using slave labor. He was also the first head of the People's Commisariat for Internal Affairs (abbreviated NKVD), and was thus responsible for taking the actions that directly sparked the Great Purge as well as for the Ukrainian famine of 1932 to 1933.
However, Yagoda wasn't where the buck stopped. While he was responsible for the implementation of various policies, he wasn't responsible for those policies being chosen in the first place. He could have been less murderous in his methods (BOOOOOOring), but that probably simply would have gotten him replaced by someone else altogether. In fact, that's what happened: when Yagoda sent a memo outlining foreign response to the Great Purge, Stalin took it as a sign of weakness, replaced Yagoda with Nikolai Yezhov, then had Yagoda and his wife executed.
This isn't to let Yagoda off the hook. He actively made decisions in his life that put him in a place where he could only be ruthless and murderous, and sympathy for the devil isn't required here. However, it does explain why Yagoda is much less well-known than, for example, Adolf Hitler. Without Yagoda, the Ukrainians still would have starved, the zeks still would have been worked to death and the show trials still would have been performed because, fundamentally, that's what Josef Stalin, the unquestioned ruler of the Soviet Union at the time, wanted to happen. To use a metaphor, Stalin was the engine, Yagoda was at most a tire.
So comparing Yagoda to Hitler is a bit of a case of apples to oranges. Both were evil men, but Hitler ran his show while Yagoda played a highly replaceable supporting role in his. A more analogous man in Nazi Germany would be Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, who is generally better known in the West than is Yagoda.
[–] PacifistRacist [S] 2 points 1 point 3 points (+3|-2) ago
what the fuck you talking about!!!: Stalin was a JEW! Of course the JEW committed Genocide, and therefore Germanies defence against the JEW was Rightful.
[–] StBlops2cel_is_Lord ago
His mother may have been half-Jewish