Question by : How did Stalin exert so much control over the OGPU? Was he ever its chairman?
Felix Dzerzhinsky was the first OGPU director. i cant find what happened when he died. did stalin become ogpu chairman or did he have de facto control?
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Answer by Jay
The following timeline might explain what you are looking for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Soviet_secret_police_agencies
Stalin had Lavrentiy Beria who was chief of the NKVD which basically followed on from OGPU.
Beria was a nasty thug, who willingly participated in beatings and torture and had a sideline in raping girls who were often disposed of afterwards. Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag slave labour camps, and was primarily responsible for the Katyn massacre of Polish army officers in WWII, he participated in the purges. Besides being a psychopathic thug he was also a Stalin loyalist and coward, Stalin tolerated him for doing the dirty work and because stalin knew that he would never threaten him.
So hated was Beria that when Stalin died he tried to elevate himself and take over, but with Stalin dead he had no power left and he was overthrown, arrested for treason and shot.
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Lenny says
When Dzerzhinsky had died Stalin was secretary of the Central Committee of the party and was technically positioned the best to pick and approve the new director. Other party leaders were naive enough to leave this little technicality completely to Stalin's discretion.
Later they had paid dearly for that mistake.
Stalin put his man Yagoda in charge of that party police unit.
Later he purged Yagoda and replaced him with Yezhov when Yagoda became less efficient in jumping on Stalin's command.
Then he purged Yezhov and replaced him with Beria.
He might have plans to purge Beria as well in 1953, but it looks like Beria just killed Stalin to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Each purge of OGPU top leadership was accompanied by purging many of the OGPU ranks and files who might be suspected of any independent thinking.
Stalin was never head of OGPU. Stalin was not even the head of the USSR up untill May, 1941. He liked to rule from the shaddow.