Zinovy Ushakov

Zinovy Markovich Ushakov (Russian: Зиновий Маркович Ушаков; 7 November 1895 – 26 January 1940) was a Soviet police officer who became a notorious torturer during the Great Purge.

Born in Kiev province, the son of a carpenter, Ushakov left school at 13 to work the same trade, but was drafted into the Imperial Russian in 1916. Arrested for desertion, he spent 50 days in prison, then escaped. During the Russian Civil War, he fought as a partisan in Ukraine. He joined Cheka in Kiev in 1920, and was based in Ukraine until 1934, when he was transferred to Saratov. From February 1935 to Deecmber 1936, he was deputy head of the Special Department of the NKVD in the Belorussian Belarus Republic.

Ushakov was transferred to Moscow in January 1937, as assistant to the special department of the NKVD, Mark Gay. He played a major role in fabricating the case against Marshal Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders. The first Red Army officer to be arrested in the Great Purge, Dmitry Shmidt was interrogated by Ushakov, and forced to give evidence incriminating the commander of the Ukraine military district, Iona Yakir. After Marshal Tukhachevsky was arrested in May 1937, Ushkaov took over his itnerrogation and forced a confession out of him - which he retracted at his trial - by beating him so severely that there blood stains on the document he signed incriminating himself. After the arrest of Robert Eikhe in April 1938, Ushkaov forced a confession out of him through torture, making use of the fact that Eikhe broken ribs had not mended properly.

Ushakov was sent on a mission to the Far eastern territory in summer 1938, and was arrested in Khabarovskon 5 September, when Lavrentiy Beria was taking control of the NKVD, sentenced to death on 21 January 1940, and shot on 26 January. Unlike other victims of the Great Purge, he has never been 'rehabilitated'.