Vyacheslav Menzhinsky
| Vyacheslav Menzhinsky Вячеслав Менжинский |
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| Chairman of the OGPU | |
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In office 30 July 1926 – 10 May 1934 |
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| Premier |
Alexei Rykov Vyacheslav Molotov |
| Preceded by | Felix Dzerzhinsky |
| Succeeded by | Genrikh Yagoda |
| People's Commissar for Finance of the RSFSR | |
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In office 30 October 1917 – 21 March 1918 |
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| Premier | Vladimir Lenin |
| Preceded by | Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov |
| Succeeded by | Isidore Gukovsky |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky 19 August 1874 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire |
| Died | 10 May 1934 (aged 59) Moscow, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics |
| Political party | All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) |
| Alma mater | Saint Petersburg State University |
Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky (Russian: Вячесла́в Рудо́льфович Менжи́нский, Polish: Wiaczesław Mężyński; 19 August 1874 - 10 May 1934) was a Polish-Russian revolutionary, a Soviet statesman and Party official who served as chairman of the OGPU from 1926 to 1934. He was fluent in over 10 languages (including Korean, Chinese, Turkish, and Persian, the last one learned especially in order to read works by Omar Khayyám).
Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, a hereditary dvoryanin (Russian nobility), was born into a Polish-Russian family of teachers. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at Saint Petersburg University in 1898.
He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1902. In 1905 he became a member of the military organization of the Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP. In 1906 Menzhinsky was arrested, but was able to escape from Russia. He lived in Belgium, Switzerland, France, United States, working in foreign branches of the RSDLP. He joined the editorial board of Vpered, aligning himself with Grigory Aleksinsky and Mikhail Pokrovsky, rejecting the concept of proletarian culture developed by Alexander Bogdanov and Anatoly Lunacharsky. After the February Revolution of 1917, Menzhinsky returned to Russia in the summer of that year.
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