While the accusation of lax security in the Kremlin was the pretext for humiliating Yenukidze , the real reason may have been his failure to contribute adequately to the glorification of Stalin . In particular , memoirs published in the 1920s , including Yenukidze 's , attribute the creation of the illegal printing press in Baku principally to the late Lado Ketskhoveli , and made no mention of Stalin , who was then based in Tiflis , being involved . He complained privately of being under pressure to change the record for Stalin 's benefit , saying : " I am doing everything he has asked me to do , but it is not enough for him . He wants me to admit that he is a genius . " On 16 January 1935 , Yenukdize was forced to publish a public apology , altering the record to say that Ketskhoveli was ' sent to Baku ' by Stalin and others to set up and to create the party organisation in Baku . Six months later , Beria published a history of the Bolshevik organisation in Transcaucasia which accused Yenukidze of having " deliberately and with hostile intent " falsified the record . Yenukidze was arrested on 11 February 1937 . During the purges , it was comparatively rare for the Soviet press to publicise executions , apart from those of the defendants at show trials . In a rare exception to this rule , it was reported in '' Pravda '' that Yenukdize and six others had been tried in private on 15 December 1937 , and executed on 20 December . His co-defendants were said to have been the Armenian diplomat , Lev Karakhan , the former Georgian party secretary Mamia Orakhelashvili , two former leading official from the North Caucasus , V.F.Larin and Boris Sheboldayev , the diplomat Vladimir Tsukerman , and the mysterious ' Baron ' Boris Steiger . During the largest of the Moscow Trials , in March 1938 , Yenukidze was posthumously denounced by one of the leading defendants , the former head of the NKVD , Genrikh Yagoda as the linchpin of the supposed ' rightist conspiracy ' and the principle organiser of the assassination of Kirov , and the supposed murder by poisoning of Maxim Gorky
purges
Great Purge
Avel Yenukidze