On April 4, 1937, Soviet newspapers dryly announced the dismissal of Heinrich Yagoda, the former head of the NKVD, for "criminal misconduct." But behind the bureaucratic language lay a scandal that would make even the most jaded Stalinist blush—a trove of depravity worthy of a decadent tsar, not a proletarian commissar.
When agents raided Yagoda's residence, they didn't just find evidence of political crimes. They uncovered a private museum of erotic obsession: 3,904 pornographic photographs, 11 "adult films" (a staggering haul in 1937), and over a hundred pipes shaped like genitalia. The pièce de résistance? A rubber phallus, smuggled past customs like contraband caviar.
More puzzling than the smut was the wardrobe: 57 silk blouses, 70 pairs of women's tights, and 130 stockings—enough to outfit a small ballet troupe. Was Yagoda:
Defector Georgy Agabekov claimed Yagoda hosted debauched parties with "wine and women recruited from the Komsomol." Whether true or exile's revenge, the allegations fit the evidence like a silk stocking—a portrait of a man who enforced purges by day and indulged every vice by night.
In the end, Yagoda's true crime wasn't pornography—it was hypocrisy. He built a career destroying lives for "moral decay" while amassing a collection that would make Caligula raise an eyebrow. The People's Commissar, it seemed, preferred being a very private degenerate.
