Veinshtok (Weinstock) Yakov (Jakow) Markovich (00.00.1899 – 23 February 1939) — state security officer.*
Senior Major of State Security (1935), member of the Communist Party since 1919, Yakov Yeinshtok was born in the village of Sawniki, Rezhitsa Uyezd (according to other sources, the locality of Rechitsa, Rozentovskaya Volost), Vitebsk Governorate, into the family of a small-scale trader. He completed four years of city school and worked as a clerk in a firm in Petrograd.
From December 1918, he served in the Red Army as a clerk in a rifle battalion stationed in Vologda. Joined the Cheka in May 1919. From 1919 to 1922, he served in the North and in Ukraine: head of a special station of the Special Department of the 6th Army in Kotlas; deputy head of the Special Department of the Severo-Dvinsk Flotilla and the White Sea Fleet; head of the information unit of the Special Department of the 14th Army; head of the Special Departments of the 41st, 44th, and 24th Rifle Divisions; and head of the 1st and 2nd special departments of the Special Department of the Kiev Military District.
From 1922, he worked in counterintelligence and border troops: assistant head of the Counterintelligence Department (KRO) and head of the border security subdepartment of the GPU plenipotentiary representation in Right-Bank Ukraine. From 1923, he served as assistant head of the KRO (location unspecified), assistant and deputy head of the Border Guard Division and Inspector of GPU Troops, and head of the Administrative-Organisational Department of the OGPU plenipotentiary representation in the North Caucasus Territory.
During the 1921 party purge, he was expelled for being an “intellectual.” In 1926, he rejoined the party on general grounds, and his previous party membership was reinstated by decision of the Control Commission of the North Caucasus Regional Party Organisation.
From 1930, he worked in the central apparatus of the OGPU-NKVD: head of the Administrative Department of the Administrative-Organisational Directorate; head of the Border Security Division of the Main Directorate of Border Guard and Troops; deputy head of the OGPU Central School; and assistant head of the Main Militia Inspectorate.
From August 1931, he was business manager of the OGPU and chairman of the OGPU cooperative board. From 1933, deputy head of the Personnel Department of the OGPU; from July 1934, head of the Personnel Department of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD and the Personnel Sector (from October 1934, the Personnel Department) of the NKVD of the USSR. He served as head of the OGPU-NKVD Central School from March 1933 to October 1936 (according to other sources, until 1934¹).
After Nikolai Yezhov assumed leadership of the NKVD, Yakov Yeinshtok was dismissed from his posts and appointed head of the 10th (Prison) Department of the GUGB NKVD.
From April 1938, he served as Deputy People’s Commissar of Water Transport of the USSR. Awarded the Order of the Red Star (1937) and two “Honorary Worker of the VChK-GPU” badges.
Arrested on 25 November (according to other sources, 21 September) 1938. Executed by order of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 23 February 1939. Rehabilitated in 1957.
¹ According to the reference work Who Led the NKVD, 1934–1941, from which much of this information is drawn, Yakov Yeinshtok headed the OGPU Central School until 1934. However, the commemorative volume FSB Academy of Russia: 80 Years (Moscow, 2001, p. 23 and photograph insert) states that he served as head of the GUGB NKVD Central School until 1936.