On April 4, 1937, Soviet newspapers dryly announced the dismissal of Heinrich Yagoda—former head of the NKVD—for "criminal abuses of office." But behind the bureaucratic phrasing lay a scandal so lurid it could make a sailor blush. The man who once orchestrated purges had been hoarding a private museum of decadence that would’ve made Caligula raise an eyebrow.
When authorities raided Yagoda’s residence, they didn’t just find evidence of political crimes. They uncovered a trove of 3,904 pornographic photographs—a stash so vast it suggested decades of obsessive accumulation. In an era when Soviet propaganda preached austerity, here was a man who treated smut like stamps.
The inventory read like a deviant’s shopping list:
More puzzling was the haul of women’s clothing: 57 silk blouses, 70 pairs of lingerie, and enough stockings to stretch from the Kremlin to Gorky Park. Was the ex-commissar running a black-market boutique? Secretly draping himself in chiffon? The truth dissolved into gossip—though defector Georgy Agabekov’s claims of orgies with "recruited Komsomol girls" added fuel to the fire.
History remembers Yagoda as a architect of terror. But in those seized artifacts, we glimpse something stranger: a man who built private fantasies even as he dismantled lives. The ultimate irony? None of his vices were technically illegal—just profoundly un-Marxist.
