ABSTRACT
During the preparations for the Zinoviev-Kamenev show trial, Yagoda assigned to the assistant chief of the NKVD Secret Political Department, Isaac Lvovich Shtein, the task of locating in the NKVD archive documents of former Okhrana officers, whom Yagoda intended to use as witnesses. These officers, according to Stalin, were needed to ‘confirm’ that they had recruited the ‘double dealers’ Kamenev and Zinoviev as Okhrana collaborators.1 In connection with this search, Yagoda ordered the examination of the personal papers of Viacheslav Menzhinsky in his old office, which had been closed and sealed after his death in May 1934.2 Around this time, it was also decided to renovate Menzhinsky’s spacious office for Yezhov, who was spending much of his time in the Lubianka, supervising preparations for the show trials.
