Lev Leonidovich (Aronovich) Shvartzman (Russian: Лев Леони́дович (Аронович) Шва́рцман; 25 July 1907 – 13 May 1955) was a Soviet MGB officer, notorious for his brutality, who was executed for using torture to extract false confessions from prisoners.

Pikina refused to sign a confession despite being severely beaten with rubber truncheons, put through a fake execution,[3] and allegedly raped by Shvartsman and his colleague Boris Rodos.

[1] Vsevolod Meyerhold, who at the time had a greater reputation internationally than any other living theatre director in the USSR, wrote an account shortly before his execution of how he was tortured by Shvartsman.

Lying face down on the floor, I discovered that I could wriggle, twist and squeal like a dog when its master whips it...[2]Meyerhold was 65 at the time.

In March 1940, Shvartzman was posted in Vyborg, which had just been seized during the Soviet Finnish War and incorporated in the USSR, and charged with creating an NKVD department in the captured territory.

In June 1949 he was sent to Bulgaria to assist in the investigation of Traicho Kostov, a member of the Political Bureau of the Bulgarian Communist Party.

He invented unbelievable stories, like being inspired in his terrorist activities by drinking Zionist soup prepared by his Jewish aunt, or sleeping with his stepdaughter, or having homosexual relations with his son.

[6]After Stalin's death, the Doctors' Plot was exposed as a fabrication, and Lavrenti Beria, who had regained control of the security services, offered Shvartzman a deal, that if he admitted extracting false confessions under torture, the charge of being a Zionist conspirator would be dropped, and he would receive a prison sentence.