Yakov Agranov

Yakov Agranov
First Deputy People's Commissar for Internal Affairs
In office
July 1934 – April 1937
Preceded byposition established
Succeeded byMikhail Frinovsky
Personal details
Born
Yankel Samuilovich Sorenson

(1893-10-12)12 October 1893
Checherskaya, Gomel Region, Belarus (then Mogilev Governorate, Russian Empire)
Died1 August 1938(1938-08-01) (aged 44)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
AwardsOrder of the Red Banner (twice)
Military service
AllegianceSoviet Union
Branch/serviceNKVD
Years of service1919–1938
RankCommissar of State Security 1st rank
Yakov Agranov in 1934. From left to right: Agranov, Yagoda, unknown, and Redens.

Yakov Saulovich Agranov (Russian: Я́ков Сау́лович Агра́нов; born Yankel Samuilovich Sorenson; 12 October 1893 – 1 August 1938) was the first chief of the Soviet Main Directorate of State Security and a deputy of NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda. He is known as one of main organizers of Soviet political repressions and Stalinist show trials in the 1920s and 1930s. He fabricated the "Tagantsev conspiracy" case and the Moscow trials, including the Trial of the Twenty One and the Industrial Party Trial, as well as mass arrests and executions in Saint Petersburg during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.