/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Currently there are two mainstream interpretations among historians regarding Yagoda. The first one comes from Yagoda himself
>he claimed that he was an active revolutionary from the age of 14 when he worked as a compositor on an underground printing press in Nizhny Novgorod, and that at the age of 15 he was a member of a fighting squad in the Sormovo district of Nizhny Novgorod, during the violent suppression of the 1905 revolution. He said he joined the Bolsheviks in Nizhny Novgorod at the age of 16
and the second one comes from former NKVD officer Aleksandr M. Orlov, who claimed that
>Yagoda invented his early revolutionary career and did not join the Bolsheviks until 1917, and that his deputy Mikhail Trilisser was dismissed from service for trying to expose the lie.

The Yagoda Third Pill (TYTP) synthesizes the first two positions (Yagoda said something + Yagoda lied) while adding a third proposition: Yagoda never existed. This way you have to read these three propositions backwards as such: 1) Yagoda was invented; 2) the inventors said Yagoda lied; 3) the invented Yagoda claimed otherwise.

Photographic evidence
First, the ""photographic"" evidence. Picrel1: the most famous """photograph""" of Yagoda is clearly edited using an original source and mirroring one half of the original man (let's call him "pseudo-yagoda") as pic2 proves.

Second, pic3 & pic4 shows the alleged Yagoda arrest card and the real Stalin arrest card under Tsarist Russia. (Disregard the fake yellowish discoloration for a second, that's sepia effect added later.) The forged "Yagoda arrest card" was stylized after Stalin's. Notice the same attire: black shoes, trousers, jacket, hat, white shirt. Also notice how this supposed "Young Yagoda" looks nothing like "Mature Yagoda" in pic 1.

Third, the supposed "Yagoda marches with young Khruschev" pic5. Look at it very closely! Notice something? Look closer. The picture of "them" is clearly added onto another background picture. Also of note. By this time Hitler was a known figure and whoever created the mirage known as "Yagoda" tried to make him look more and more like Hitler.

Anecdotal evidence
An American journalist who was allowed to join "him" on the trip described Yagoda as
>"a spare, slightly-tanned, trim looking, youngish officer"
adding that it was
>"difficult to associate terror with the affable and modest person".
Compare this to the chemist Vladimir Ipatieff's account who briefly met "him" in Moscow in 1918 and later recorded that he had thought that
>"it was unusual for a young man in his early twenties to be so unpleasant.
Clearly, there is a discrepancy here. First, someone who is pleasant person not possible to associate with terror, then someone who is unpleasant, a terrorist. But there's more. The same chemist Ipatieff met "Yagoda" later, and recalls that "his":
>"appearance had changed considerably"
Clearly, several people played the part of the supposed "Yagoda".

Further historic evidence
When supposed "Yagoda" was arrested in 1937 the newly appointed NKVD chief Yezhov accused him of
>diamond smuggling, corruption and working as a German agent since joining the party in 1917.
As I said above, the fiction of a "traitorous Yagoda" was to be associated with Germany, Hitler specifically. But this is where it gets beyond parody:
>It was discovered that Yagoda's two Moscow apartments and his dacha contained, besides a large collection of female clothing and apparel, 3,904 pornographic photos, 11 pornographic films, 165 pornographically carved pipes and cigarette holders, one rubber dildo, the two bullets that killed Zinoviev and Kamenev and 549 books - some of which were trotskyist works.
Clearly, since the soviets associated Nazis with degeneracy, they wanted to print accusations of ridiculousness such as this.

But most importantly, after the leadership change following Stalin's death
>Yagoda was the only defendant not to be posthumously rehabilitated.
The reason? There was nobody to rehabilitate. You can't rehabilitate a fiction.

Most likely conclusion
"Yagoda" was made up by the NKVD. He served several purposes over his fictional "existence."