Immediately after the assassination of Sergey Kirov in Leningrad on 1 December 1934 , Agranov was entrusted with the organization of mass reprisals in the city . Stalin ordered him to fabricate a story that Lev Kamenev , Grigory Zinoviev and other leaders of the opposition were responsible for the murder , but seems to have resisted , whereupon Stalin entrusted Nikolai Yezhov to do it instead . In 1935 , he was ordered by Yezhov to track down and liquidate " an undiscovered centre of Trotskyists " in Moscow , as a preparatory step for the great purge that Stalin was planning . When Yezhov took over as head of the NKVD , Agranov remained his First Deputy , and in December 1936 was appointed Head of the Chief Directorate of State Security , which seemingly meant that he was to be trusted to purge the NKVD of officers Yezhov did not trust . In February 1937 , he circulated regional NKVD heads demanding names of Trotskyists and other oppositionists employed with the state security apparatus . In April , he was demoted to the post of regional NKVD chief in Saratov . He was arrested on 20 July 1937 , and appeared on the execution list of 1 November 1937 , in which his name was crossed out . He was executed by firing squad as an " enemy of the people " on 1 August 1938
great purge
Great Purge
Yakov Agranov