Lev Shvartzman: Stalin's Torturer During the Great Purge in the Soviet Union

Lev Shvartzman was one of the most feared interrogators of Stalin’s Soviet secret police, becoming notorious for torture, forced confessions, and his role in the Great Purge. Born in 1907 in Shpola, in the Russian Empire, Shvartzman came from a family opposed to Bolshevik rule. Despite this background, he joined the Komsomol in 1925, worked as a journalist, and entered the NKVD in 1935 as Stalin’s campaign of repression intensified.Under NKVD chiefs Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov, Shvartzman rose rapidly through the ranks. Initially considered ineffective, he found his place as an interrogator, where brutality became his defining characteristic. Armed with rubber truncheons, belts, cables, and virtually unlimited authority, he tortured writers, military officers, Communist Party officials, and alleged “enemies of the people.”Among his victims were former Komsomol leader Aleksandr Kosarev, writer Isaac Babel, theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold, Marshal Vasily Blyukher, and Valentina Pikina. Testimonies and letters described beatings, sleep deprivation, humiliation, and physical torture used to extract false confessions. In 1941, Shvartzman participated in the interrogation of Red Army commander Grigory Shtern, inflicting injuries so severe that they contributed to his death.During and after the Second World War, Shvartzman continued to advance within the Soviet security apparatus, eventually becoming deputy head of one of the MGB’s most important investigative divisions. However, during Stalin’s antisemitic Doctors’ Plot campaign, Shvartzman himself was arrested. Under torture, he signed absurd confessions accusing himself of espionage, terrorism, and other fabricated crimes.Although the case collapsed after Stalin’s death in 1953, Soviet authorities later prosecuted Shvartzman for his role in torture and unlawful investigations. On 3 March 1955, he was sentenced to death, and on 13 May 1955 he was executed at the age of 47.This documentary examines Lev Shvartzman’s rise within the Soviet secret police, his role in Stalin’s terror apparatus, the torture of prominent Soviet figures, and the downfall of one of the most feared interrogators in Soviet history.This episode is part of the series The Fate of the Top Soviet Officials.Watch the full documentary and explore hundreds of historical films at:WorldHistory.tv