Mazo Solomon Samoilovich (1900-1937)

Mazo (Maso) Solomon Samoilovich (07.06.1900, Dvinsk – 04.05/04.07.1937, Kharkiv) – State Security Commissar.

Solomon Mazo was born into the family of a commission agent. In 1908–1915, he studied at a private gymnasium in Dvinsk, and in 1915–1918, at the 5th Kharkiv Gymnasium. In 1918, he enrolled in the law faculty of Kharkiv University. In 1919, he joined the Communist Party. In 1920, he enrolled in the Higher Military School of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Moscow). He worked in Kharkiv as a cashier-clerk in private offices and in the Council of National Economy, and served in the Communist Special Purpose Detachment. From 1919, he worked for the newspaper of the Ural Regional Bureau of the Supreme Council of National Economy in Yekaterinburg. In 1919-21, he served in the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army as a private in the 5th Regiment of the Reserve Army and as an employee of the Political Administration of the Red Army of the Kharkov Military District. From 1921, he served in the Cheka: as an employee of the Economic Department, the Secret Department, and head of the Political Control Department of the Kharkiv Provincial Cheka of the GPU. From 1923, he worked in the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR as secretary of the party cell, and in 1923-24 he was head of the political control department of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR, and from 1926 he was deputy head and head of the Economic Counter-Intelligence Department of the State Security Directorate of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR. From 1935 he was a 3rd rank GB commissar. From October 1936 he was head of the UNKVD of the Kharkiv region. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner (1930) and two medals ‘Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU’. He shot himself in his office, leaving a note (‘Comrades, come to your senses! Where will this line of arrests and beatings lead?’). At the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine in July 1937, he was posthumously expelled from the party. He was posthumously reinstated in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1958.

Lit.: Skorkin, K., Petrov, N. Who Led the NKVD. 1934–1941 (Кто руководил НКВД. 1934―1941). Moscow: Zvenya. 1999.