Yevgeny Tuchkov

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The sixth department of the OGPU, Tuchkov is seated second from right

Eugene Tuchkov, or Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Tuchkov (in Russian Евгегний Александрович Тучков) was the head of the anti-religious arm of the Soviet OGPU.

Tuchkov was born in 1892 in the village of Teliakovo near Suzdal. He finished four years of primary education after which he worked as a baker and also in a leather shop. He then served in the Russian Imperial Army as a secretary.

In 1917 Tuchkov joined the Bolsheviks and in 1918, the Cheka. From 1922 to 1929 Tuchkov headed the sixth secret department of the OGPU which targeted the Russian Orthodox Church during the 1920's.

During this period, Tuchkov orchestrated a campaign of persecution against the church which included the mass arrests and executions of clergy. He personally led the questioning of Patriarch Tikhon. He had also begun supporting the liberal and modernist obnovlentsy church movement, seeking to make it a replacement for traditional Russian Orthodoxy.

In 1928, Tuchkov enrolls in Moscow State University but drops out a year later. In 1939, Tuchkov is fired from the NKVD, whereupon he begins working as a lecturer for the society "Knowledge". He is believed to have died in the early 1950's.