In the 1930s he was responsible for setting up many orphanages and communes for delinquent children , and was the man who founded the Bolshevo Commune . He was the inspiration for the very popular Soviet film , '' Putevka v Zhizn '' ( " Path to Life " ) in 1931 . He was the head of the NKVD in the Gorky Oblast ( Nizhny Novgorod ) and in 1937 committed suicide in order to avoid " participation in lawlessness , as his suicide letter reveals . " In 1954 the scholar Alexander Orlov explained Pogrebinsky 's suicide in a similar fashion , " Squeezed between the relentless discipline of the party and pangs of conscience , Pogrebinsky saw in suicide the only way out " . His suicide was similar to many officials during the Great Terror , as revolutionaries who could not deal with the terror of Stalinism saw suicide as the only escape
Great Terror
Great Purge
Matvei Pogrebinsky