agriculture. As one of Nikolai Yezhov’s chief deputies during the Red
Terror, Frinovskiy took part in the purge of the party and the NKVD.
Following the purge of the armed forces and the executionof many
senior naval officers, Frinovskiy was made People’s Commissar of the
Navy in September 1938. In April 1939 he was stripped of this post
and arrested. He was shot after a short trial in February 1940 on the
same day as his mentor, Nikolai Yezhov.FRENKEL, NAFTALII ARONOVICH (1883–1960). One of the
most odious of the first generation of Chekists, Frenkel went from
prisoner to security service general in less than a decade. His early
life is shrouded in mystery. He was according to most accounts a
petty criminal in the Odessa underworld. Following the Revolution
of November 1917, he was arrested several times for theft and rob-
bery. In May 1927 he emerged from prison to take an important post
in the labor camp directorate, apparently because he sold the OGPU
leadership on the long-term economic benefits of prison labor. In the
1930s he supervised the work on the Belomor Canal, the first mas-
sive slave labor project of the gulagsystem. He was promoted to
lieutenant general in 1943 and awarded the Order of Lenin. He re-
tired in 1947 and died peacefully in 1960.FSB (FEDERALNAYA SLUZHBA BEZOPASNOSTI). The Federal
Security Service was created by Russian President Boris Yeltsinon
21 December 1995 to place all the domestic and counterintelligence
and security components of the former KGBunder one roof. The
FSB took on the domestic duties of the KGB and reports directly to
the president of the Russian Federation. The current chief of the FSB,
Nikola Platonovich Petrushev, is a close associate of Russian Presi-
dent Vladimir Putinand a veteran of the KGB. The FSB is the
largest security service in Europe, and the second largest in the world.
The FSB remains a formidable counterintelligence service. The
Russian press and the FSB website have noted FSB arrests of espi-
onage agents and the expulsion of foreign diplomats, including some
from the United States, Great Britain, Poland, and Japan. The FSB
also arrested a number of foreign terrorists inside Russia who had
connections with Islamic fundamentalist organizations, and it con-
ducted covert paramilitary operations in Chechnya against national-88 •FRENKEL, NAFTALII ARONOVICH (1883–1960)06-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 88