OGPU

(OBYEDINENNOE GOSUDARTVENNOE POLITICHESKOE UPRAVLENIYE)

   The OGPU (Unified State Political Directorate) was founded on 2 November 1923 as a successor to the GPU, and it was replaced by the NKVD in June 1934. Under Joseph Stalin’s ever watchful eyes, the OGPU became an important player in the execution of Soviet foreign and domestic policies. Stalin relied on the OGPU for information on political rivals, such as Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin. The OGPU also played a critical role in the industrialization of the country and the collectivization of agriculture. The OGPU crushed resistance to collectivization and deported millions of peasants and their families to Siberia and Central Asia. The majority of the exiled peasants were imprisoned in the OGPU’s growing network of forced labor camps in the gulag system. In the field of foreign policy, the OGPU concentrated on counterintelligence operations against émigré groups. It also recruited and ran agents with access to political and economic information. The OGPU also acted as Stalin’s avenging arms, killing two critical White generals in Paris as well as Ukrainian émigré leaders in Poland. OGPU illegals recruited important signals intelligence agents as sources of cryptological information.

   The leadership of the OGPU was drawn from those who had served in the Revolution of 1917 and the civil war. Jewish, Polish, 180 OGPU ( OBYEDINENNOE GOSUDARTVENNOE POLITICHESKOE UPRAVLENIYE) and Balt Chekists, who were deeply distrusted by Stalin, were heavily represented within the leadership of the OGPU. By 1936 Stalin had begun to purge the security service. Only a few of the service’s leaders in 1936 would survive the next two years.

   See also Yezhov, Nikolai; Yezhovshchina.