Ivan Zaporozhets

Ivan Vasilevich Zaporozhets (Russian: Иван Васильевич Запорожец; 6 January 1895 – 14 August 1937) was a Ukrainian Soviet security officer and official of the OGPU-NKVD who was suspected of being involved in the assassination of Sergei Kirov in Leningrad in December 1934.

Released after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, he returned to Kherson, rejoined the Left SRs, and in spring 1919, he took part Ataman Nykyfor Hryhoriv's revolt against Bolshevik rule in Ukraine.

The historian of the Great Purge, Robert Conquest observed: "If anyone in Soviet political life was totally unqualified to insist on anything, it was Yenukidze ...

"[6] The NKVD officer, Alexander Orlov, who defected to the west, suspected it was true, because of the lenient treatment Zaporozhets was given while he was in the Gulag.

[1] Zaporozhets was recalled from Kolyma to Moscow and rearrested on 1 May 1937, when the head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov, ordered a purge of officers who had held senior positions under his predecessor, Genrikh Yagoda.

In June, he confessed to having been part of a 'right wing conspiracy' involving Yagoda and the commander of the Leningrad military district, Ivan Belov.