Medved, Fillip Demyanovich

(1889–1937)

   Medved was a protégé of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, who sponsored him as a member of the Bolshevik Party in 1907. He took part in the Revolution of November 1917 in Moscow as a party militant and organizer. Medved joined the Cheka in 1918 and was notorious for his persecution of dissident Russian Orthodox clergy in the late 1920s. He was made chief of the Leningrad NKVD in 1930.

   In Leningrad, Medved worked closely with party boss Sergei Kirov, with whom he became especially close. In October 1934 Joseph Stalin recommended that Kirov be moved to Moscow and ordered Medved to make changes in Kirov’s security detail. On 1 December 1934, Kirov was murdered by a lone assassin, Leonid Nikolaev, who had twice been detained loitering near the party leader’s residence by the new security detail. Stalin blamed Medved for the assassination, reportedly slapping him across the face when he arrived in Leningrad to investigate the murder. Medved was almost immediately sentenced to three years confinement in a labor camp. While he was initially treated more as a guest than a prisoner, he was recalled to Moscow in May 1937 and rearrested for terrorism. He was shot in July 1937, a victim and a scapegoat of the Kirov case. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.