Stanislav Redens

Stanislav Frantsevich Redens (, ; 17 May 1892 – 12 February 1940) was a Soviet NKVD official, one of those responsible for conducting mass repressions under Joseph Stalin. Redens was executed in 1940 after his arrest at the conclusion of the Great Purge in 1938.

Early life Born to a Polish worker's family in Tykocin in the Łomża Governorate of the Russian Empire, Redens received a limited education and began working in metallurgy in 1907. A Bolshevik since 1914, he was briefly mobilized into the army during World War I but was soon demobilized and returned to political activity in time for the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Career Redens began to work for the newly established Cheka in 1918, amid the Russian Civil War. He was energetically involved in dekulakization in Ukraine, serving as the head of the Odessa Cheka. Redens held important positions in the Crimean GPU in 1922–1923. thumb Stanislav Redens in 1934. From left to right: Agranov, Yagoda, unknown, and Redens. Though made a chief of the Transcaucasian GPU in 1928, Redens was gradually sidelined by his own deputy Lavrenty Beria. In 1931, he was appointed the OGPU head in the Byelorussian SSR and then in the Ukrainian SSR. During his tenure in Ukraine, Redens gained infamy for crackdowns on farmers, which contributed to the Holodomor, the starvation of millions of Ukrainians as part of a larger famine across the Soviet Union. In January 1933, he was recalled to Moscow and placed in charge of the NKVD units in the Moscow Oblast where Redens spearheaded purges following Sergey Kirov assassination in 1934.

Redens was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in 1937 and appointed as People's Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in 1938. He was arrested in November 1938 on charges of being a member of "Polish subversive-spying group". He was shot on 12 February 1940. He was rehabilitated under Nikita Khrushchev in 1961.