etry and flirted with Satanism. He returned to Russia following the
February Revolution.
Menzhinsky joined the Chekain 1919 and served in the Ukraine
in intelligence and counterintelligencecapacities during the Russian
civil war. In the early 1920s he led the Cheka’s antireligious cam-
paignagainst the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1923 he was made
Feliks Dzerzhinsky’s deputy and heir apparent. Upon Dzerzhinsky’s
death in 1926, Menzhinsky was appointed to lead the service. Men-
zhinsky, like his patron, was willing to use the service in intraparty
struggles, supporting Joseph Stalinunconditionally against his op-
position. Under Menzhinsky, the service’s empire grew: it supervised
an expanding empire of forced labor camps, crushed opposition in
the countryside during Stalin’s program of collectivization, and be-
came an even more aggressive and intrusive security service. Men-
zhinsky played a key role in creating public show trialsof foreign
“spies” and Soviet “wreckers” in the late 1920s and early 1930s to in-
timidate the population and create a war scarementality in the coun-
try. These proceedings became the model of the Moscow Trialsof
the late 1930s. Menzhinsky’s death in 1934 allowed Stalin to meddle
further with the security service, promote Genrykh Yagoda, and take
the final steps to make the service a pliant tool of the dictator.MERCADER DEL RIO, RAMON (1918–1978).As a young man,
Mercader took part in the Spanish Civil War. His mother, Caridad,
was a dedicated Spanish communist, and his older brother was killed
in combat in Spain. In 1938 Mercader was recruited by NKVD ille-
gal Leonid Eitingonand his mother to penetrate Leon Trotsky’s in-
ner circle in Mexico. Documented as “Frank Jacson,” Mercader
gained entry to Trotsky’s circle through a woman he had seduced and
who was unwitting of his plans. Following failed efforts on Trotsky’s
life, Mercader was ordered to kill Trotsky with an ice-climbing ax
and to plead before a Mexican court that his act was not political but
connected with his love affair with one of Trotsky’s associates. The
murder was successful and the cover story survived the Mexican
court’s scrutiny. Mercader served 20 years in a Mexican prison, then
made his way to Moscow. He was decorated by the KGBand lived
in obscurity in Moscow for 10 years. In the mid-1970s he traveled to
Cuba to serve as an advisor to Fidel Castro.MERCADER DEL RIO, RAMON (1918–1978) • 15706-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 157