Zinovy Markovich Ushakov (Russian: Зино́вий Ма́ркович Ушако́в; 7 November 1895 – 26 January 1940) was a Soviet police officer who became a notorious torturer during the Great Purge.
Ushakov left school at age 13 to work the same trade, but was drafted into the Imperial Russian armed forces in 1916.
The first Red Army officer to be arrested in the Great Purge, Dmitry Shmidt, was interrogated by Ushakov, and forced to give evidence incriminating the commander of the Ukraine military district, Iona Yakir.
[1] After Marshal Tukhachevsky was arrested in May 1937, Ushakov took over his interrogation and forced a confession out of him – which he retracted at his trial – by beating him so severely that there were blood stains on the document he signed incriminating himself.
[3] Ushakov was sent on a mission to the Far Eastern territory in the summer of 1938 and was arrested in Khabarovsk on 5 September, when Lavrentiy Beria was taking control of the NKVD.