Pavel Bulanov

Pavel Petrovich Bulanov (Russian: Па́вел Петро́вич Була́нов; 1895 – March 15, 1938) was a NKVD officer and one of the defendants in the Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites".

Bulanov was born in 1895 in the Penza Governorate in a family of Russian ethnicity.[1] He was secretary to Genrikh Yagoda, who became head of the NKVD in July 1934. Bulanov served as the first head of the Special Council of the NKVD.

In September 1936, Yagoda, who has being removed from his post at the NKVD, ordered Bulanov to spray poison on the walls of the office of his successor, Nikolai Yezhov. Yezhov had implicated Yagoda in the December 1, 1934 assassination of Sergei Kirov. On March 29, 1937, both Yagoda and Bulanov were arrested on Yezhov's orders. Both were put on trial with 19 others on March 2, 1938. On March 13, 1938, all defendants were found guilty. Bulanov, Yagoda and 16 others out of 22 defendants total were executed two days later. Although Bulanov was rehabilitated after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1956, Yagoda was never rehabilitated (exonerated).