Pyotr Ivanovich Maggo

Pyotr Ivanovich Maggo

Peter Ivanovich Maggo ( Russian Пётр Иванович Магго ; Latvian Peteris Mago * 1879 in Ujesd Dwinsk , Vitebsk , now Latvia , † 1941 in Moscow ) was a Latvian-Russian member of the Cheka , the (O) GPU or the NKVD . During the 1930s, especially during the Great Terror , he was one of the executioners within the OGPU and the NKVD, who were responsible for the execution of supposed enemies of the people. At the end of his service, he was 3rd rank commissioner within the NKVD.

biography

Maggo was born the son of a wealthy Latvian farmer. Before the First World War he was active in agriculture with the cultivation of oats and flax and became a wealthy farmer himself. He served in the Russian Army and participated in the suppression of the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1905 in Siberia . Maggo was politically uninterested herself. With the outbreak of World War I he volunteered and returned to the service of the Russian army. During the war he was promoted to officer.

After the fall of the tsar , Maggo joined the Bolsheviks in September 1917, since he saw them as the only ones able to restore order in the country. Within the party he was given the name "magician" ( Russian маг , transcription: mag). In April 1918 Maggo joined the Cheka and was employed in the "Sveaborg" Cheka department. Because of his ruthlessness and willingness to personally kill the "enemies of the revolution", he drew the attention of Felix Dzerzhinsky and was assigned to the personal bodyguard of Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky often used his bodyguard as a personal firing squad that let unwelcome people disappear without trial.

Since Maggo excelled in this activity, he became a prison warden in 1919 in the Lubyanka , the headquarters of the Cheka in Moscow. In 1920 he was appointed head of the prison. In this position, he no longer had to take part in the shooting of prisoners, but did so voluntarily. This behavior was in contrast to his usual demeanor: he was calm, polite and, according to contemporary witnesses, looked a lot more like a village teacher because he wore a pince-nez and a small beard.

In 1924 Maggo was transferred to the Supreme Council for National Economy . But he didn't like this job. In 1931 he submitted a petition to return to the service of the OGPU as an officer for special tasks (the execution of death sentences). This request was granted to Maggo and he was soon promoted to captain of the OGPU. Contemporary witnesses who knew Maggo claimed that he wanted to do this job for the fun of killing. Unlike other OGPU executioners, he had no problem shooting women.

Between 1931 and 1940 Maggo shot over 10,000 people, between 3 and 15 people a day. He often “worked” on weekends and holidays. After completing his duties, he could eat and get drunk. In contrast to the other executioners of the OGPU or NKVD, Maggo always had a big appetite. For his “merits” Maggo was awarded the Order of the Red Star (1936) and the Order of the Red Banner (1937). Unlike many other Soviet intelligence officials, Maggo served under Jagoda , Jeschow, and Lavrenti Beria and was not executed as an unnecessary witness himself.

In 1940 Maggo was dismissed from the special service of the NKVD, since his activities were now transferred to the jurisdiction of the military. On the other hand, he wrote a petition to Stalin, but only received the answer that the “Führer” has his own problems. Maggo got more and more drunk and died of cirrhosis in 1941 . He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

literature

• WA Goncharov, AI Kokurin (Ed.): Guardsmen of October. The role of the peoples of the Baltic states in the establishment and strengthening of the Bolshevik regime. Indrik Moscow 2009. ISBN 978-5-91674-014-1 (Russian)

Web links

• Maggo, PI - Site of the Project Against Torture (Russian, accessed September 20, 2013)
• Stalin's record executioner (Russian, accessed September 20, 2013)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Goncharov, Kokurin: Gardisten des Oktober , p. 428.