Over the years it had many different names. During the worst period of Stalin's bloody regime when its agents murdered millions it was called the NKVD, The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs.

the OGPU (later the NKVD), from the 1920s on. The second part of the book focuses on Vavilov's fall from Josef Stalin's favor, which eventually led to Vavilov's arrest, and the rise of Trofim ...

In 1938, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin summoned him to Moscow to work as the deputy to the chief of the Soviet secret police (NKVD). Within months the chief had disappeared and Beria had replaced him.

TODAY is the 85th anniversary of the first of a series of mass deportations from Poland’s eastern borderlands to Siberia.