Encyclopedia of Russian History

Yabloko’s candidates were mostly young professionals and intellectuals. In the December 1993 election they won 7.9 percent of the vote and twenty seats in the national party-list race, and seven single-mandate districts. They were the sixth-largest party in the 450-seat Duma. Yabloko took up a position of principled opposition to the Yeltsin government. It opposed the new December 1993 constitution, refused to sign Yeltsin’s Civil Accord in May 1994, and repeatedly voted against government-proposed legislation.

Yavlinsky ran Yabloko as a tight ship. Deputies who did not vote the Yabloko line were expelled from the party. In January 1995 Yabloko formally converted itself from an electoral bloc into a party. It claimed branches in more than 60 regions of Russia, although its most visible strength was in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and, curiously, the Far East. Yabloko projected an image that was partly liberal and partly social democratic, but nearly always critical of the government. They competed

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YAGODA, GENRIKH GRIGOREVICH

for the liberal electorate with the pro-government reform party (at first Russia’s Choice, then Union of Right Forces). Party identification among Yabloko voters was rather weak, and surveys indicate that they were scattered across the entire political spectrum.

In the December 1995 Duma election Yabloko maintained its position, finishing fourth with 6.9 percent of the vote, thirty-one seats on the party list, and fourteen seats in single-mandate races. Yabloko established a visible presence in the parliament through articulate young leaders such as Alexei Arbatov, deputy chair of the defense committee. In November 1997 Yabloko’s Mikhail Zadornov, the head of the Duma’s budget committee, joined the government as finance minister. In May 1999 Yabloko voted for impeaching Yeltsin because of his actions in the first Chechen war. In August 1999 former prime minister and anticorruption campaign Sergei Stepashin chose to join Yabloko rather than the rival Right Cause. But in the December 1999 Duma elections Yabloko’s support slipped to 5.9 percent (yielding sixteen seats, plus four in the single mandates). It was probably hurt by Yavlinsky’s criticism of the government’s new war in Chechnya.

Yabloko mainly existed as a vehicle for its leader, Yavlinsky. The rise of Vladimir Putin sunk Yavlinsky’s presidential chances, leaving Yabloko as a visible but relatively powerless voice of opposition. See also: CONSTITUTION OF 1993; YAVLINSKY, GRIGORY ALEXEYEVICH; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Yabloko website, English version. (1999). «http://www .yabloko.ru/Engl/».

PETER RUTLAND

YAGODA, GENRIKH GRIGOREVICH

(1891-1938), state security official, general commissar of state security (1935).

Genrikh Grigorevich Yagoda was a native of Rybinsk, the son of an artisan and the second cousin of the revolutionary leader Yakov Sverdlov, to whose niece he was married. He finished eight classes of gymnasium in Nizhni Novgorod before joining an anarchist-communist group (1907), and

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later the Social Democratic Party (December 1907). In 1912 he was arrested and exiled to Simbirsk. After returning from exile, he joined the army as a soldier and corporal in the Fifth Corps (1914-1917) and was wounded in action. In 1917, Yagoda worked with the journal, Soldatskaya Pravda, before taking part in the October Revolution in Pet-rograd. He entered the Cheka (military intelligence service) in November 1919 and was attached to the Special (00) Branch (watchdog of the military), and by July 1920 was a member of the Cheka Collegium. He worked his way up in the Cheka-GPU-OGPU (Obyedinennoye Gosudarstvennoye Politich-eskoye Upravlenie, forerunner of the KGB), heading the Special Branch and later the Secret Political Department (watchdog of the intellectual life). In July 1927 he was the First Deputy Chairman of OGPU, but was later replaced by Ivan Akulov and demoted to deputy chairman. During the last two years, serving under the sickly Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Yagoda actually ran the punitive organs. Taking an active part in working against Josef Stalin’s enemies, he was rewarded by being elected as candidate member of the Central Committee (1930) and later as a full member (1934). After Menzhinsky’s death in May 1934, the OGPU was re-formed as NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) on July 10, 1934, and Yagoda became its first commissar, the only Jew to hold this position. In 1935, when the rank of marshall of the Soviet Union was introduced in the Red Army, Yagoda received the equivalent rank of commissar general of state security, held by only two others (his successors Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenti Beria).