Nikolai Yezhov

Nikolai Yezhov Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов
People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (NKVD)
In office September 1936 – November 1938
Preceded by	Genrikh Yagoda
Succeeded by	Lavrentiy Beria
Born	May 1, 1895(1895-05-01) St. Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	February 4, 1940 (aged 44) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Spouse(s)	Antonia Titova (1919-1930), Yevgenia Feigenberg (1930-1938)
Children	(to Yevgenia) Natasha Yezhova
Nickname(s)	Russian: Ежевика (Blackberry)[1] Iron Hedgehog[2]

In the original version of this photo (top), Yezhov is clearly visible on the right of the photograph. The later version (bottom) was altered by censors, removing all trace of his presence.

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (sometimes known as Ezhov; Russian: Николай́ Иванович Ежов́; May 1, 1895 – February 4, 1940) was a senior figure in the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) during the period of the Great Purge. His reign is sometimes known as the "Yezhovschina" (or "Yezhovshchina", Russian: Ежовщина, the "Yezhov era").^[3]

Early life and career

Little reliable information is available about Yezhov's family and early years. The name Nikolai Yezhov itself is the name of a character from Maxim Gorky's novel Foma Gordeyev. Yezhov was born in Saint Petersburg according to his official Soviet biography, though other records point to the possibility that he was born in Marijampolė. In a form filled out in 1921, Yezhov claimed some ability to speak Polish and Lithuanian.

He only completed his elementary education. From 1909 to 1915, he worked as a tailor's assistant and factory worker. From 1915 to 1917, Yezhov served in the Tsarist Russian army. He joined the Bolsheviks on May 5, 1917 in Vitebsk, a few months before the October Revolution. During the Russian Civil War 1919–1921 he fought in the Red Army. After February 1922, he worked in the political system, mostly as a secretary of various regional committees of the Communist Party. In 1927, he was transferred to the Accounting and Distribution Department of the Communist Party where he worked as an instructor and acting head of the department. From 1929 to 1930, he was the Deputy of the People's Commissar for Agriculture. In November 1930 he was appointed to the Head of several departments of the Communist Party: department of special affairs, department of personnel and department of industry. In 1934, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party;^[4] in the next year he became a secretary of the Central Committee. From February 1935 to March 1939, he was also the Chairman of the Central Commission for Party Control.

In the "Letter of an Old Bolshevik" (1936), which is purported to be the musings of Nikolai Bukharin^{[citation needed]}, there is this contemporary description of Yezhov:

"In the whole of my long life, I have never met a more repellent personality than Yezhov's. When I look at him I am reminded irresistibly of the wicked urchins of the courts in Rasterayeva Street, whose favorite occupation was to tie a piece of paper dipped in paraffin to a cat's tail, set fire to it, and then watch with delight how the terrified animal would tear down the street, trying desperately but in vain to escape the approaching flames. I do not doubt that in his childhood Yezhov amused himself in just such a manner and that he is now continuing to do so in different forms."

Physically, Yezhov was very short in stature (only five foot, or 151 cm) - and that, combined with his sadistic personality led to his nickname 'The Poisoned Dwarf' or 'The Bloody Dwarf'.

Head of the NKVD

Yezhov was known as a determined loyalist of Joseph Stalin, and in 1935 he wrote a paper in which he argued that political opposition must eventually lead to violence and terrorism; this became in part the ideological basis of the purges.^[5] He became People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (head of the NKVD) and a member of the Presidium Central Executive Committee on September 26, 1936, following the dismissal of Genrikh Yagoda. Yezhov's first task from Stalin was to personally investigate and conduct the prosecution of his long-time Chekist mentor Yagoda, which he did with remorseless zeal, fabricating the evidence^{[citation needed]} necessary to see him condemned to execution as a traitor. As an additional insult, Yezhov ordered Yagoda to be stripped naked and severely beaten by the guards at the Lubyanka before his execution.

Yagoda was but the first of many to die by Yezhov's orders. Under Yezhov, the Great Purge reached its height during 1937-1938, with roughly 50-75%^{[citation needed]} of the members of the Supreme Soviet and officers of the Soviet military being stripped of their positions and imprisoned, exiled to the Siberian Gulags or executed, along with a greater number of ordinary Soviet citizens, accused (usually without any evidence) of disloyalty or "wrecking" by local Chekist troikas in order to satisfy Yezhov's^{[citation needed]} arbitrary quotas for arrests and executions. Yezhov also conducted a thorough purge of the security organs, both NKVD and GRU, removing and executing many officials who had been appointed by his predecessors Yagoda and Menzhinsky, but even his own appointees as well. He staunchly maintained that it was worth having "ten innocent people suffer rather than letting one 'enemy of the people' escape". In 1937 and 1938 at least 1.3 million were arrested for, and at least 681,692 people (and likely far more) were shot for, 'crimes against the state'. The Gulag population grew by 685,201, with further deaths within (at least 140,000) and during the transports to the camps.^[6]

The apex of Yezhov's career was reached on 20 December 1937, when the party hosted a giant gala to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the NKVD at the Bolshoi Theater. Enormous banners with portraits of Stalin hung side-by-side with those of Yezhov. On a stage crowded with flowers, Anastas Mikoyan, dressed in a dark caucasian tunic and belt, praised Yezhov for his tireless work. "Learn the Stalin way to work", he said, "from Comrade Yezhov, just as he learned and will continue to learn from Comrade Stalin himself". The crux of this line was that every Soviet citizen should aspire to the same level of Stalinist orthodoxy as an NKVD agent. When presented, Yezhov received an "uproarious greeting" of thunderous applause. He stood, one observer wrote, "eyes cast down and a sheepish grin on his face, as if he wasn't sure he deserved such a rapturous reception." Stalin himself was present, and observed the scene from his private box. Yezhov may also have realized the danger he was in, as Stalin was known to have no tolerance for high Party leaders given independent public acclaim and popularity, sincerely felt or not. Stalin was, as always, deeply suspicious of the political ambitions of his immediate subordinates, and was known for regularly purging the upper ranks of his executive apparatus (as was evinced with Genrikh Yagoda) out of fear that they would conspire to oppose him.^{[citation needed]}

Decline and fall

Yezhov was appointed to the post of People's Commissar for Water Transport on April 6, 1938. While maintaining his other posts, his role as grand inquisitor and extractor of confessions gradually diminished as Stalin retreated from the worst excesses of the Great Purge. Contrary to Stalin's expectations, the vast number of party officials and military officers lost during Yezhov's purges had only been partially made good by replacement with trusted Stalinist functionaries, and he eventually correctly recognized that the disruption was severely affecting the country's ability to coordinate industrial production and defend its borders from the growing threat of Nazi Germany.

On August 22, 1938, Lavrenty Beria was named as Yezhov's deputy. Over the following months, Beria (with Stalin's approval) began to increasingly usurp Yezhov's governance of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Stalin's penchant for periodically executing and replacing his primary lieutenants was well known to Yezhov, as he had previously been the man most directly responsible for orchestrating such actions. Well familiar with the typical Stalinist bureaucratic precursors to eventual dismissal and arrest, he recognized Beria's increasing influence with Stalin as the writing on the wall, and plunged headlong into alcoholism and despair. Already a heavy drinker, in the last weeks of his service he reportedly was disconsolate, slovenly, and drunk nearly all of his waking hours, rarely bothering to show up to work. As anticipated, Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, in a report dated November 11, 1938, sharply criticized the work and methods of the NKVD during Yezhov's tenure as chief, thus creating the bureaucratic pretense necessary to remove him from power. At his own request, Yezhov was officially relieved of his post as the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs on November 25, 1938, succeeded by Beria.

Stalin was evidently content to ignore Yezhov for several months, finally ordering Beria to denounce him at the annual Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. On March 3, 1939 Yezhov was relieved of all his posts in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On April 10, 1939 he was arrested and imprisoned at the Sukhanovka prison. Yezhov quickly broke under torture, and confessed to the standard^{[clarification needed]} battery of capital crimes necessary to firmly establish a Soviet political prisoner's status as an "enemy of the people" prior to execution, including "wrecking", official incompetence, theft of government funds and treasonous collaboration with German spies and saboteurs, none of which were likely or supported by evidence.^{[citation needed]} Apart from this he confessed to a humiliating history of gross sexual deviancy^{[citation needed]}, both homosexual and heterosexual, that was oddly (in contrast with other condemned Bolshevik officials) later partially corroborated by witness reports and deemed mostly true in subsequent inquiries.

On February 3, 1940 Soviet judge Vasili Ulrikh tried Yezhov in Beria's office. Yezhov was nearly incoherent, and, like his predecessor Yagoda, mournfully maintained his love for Stalin to the end, flatly refusing Beria's suggestion that he confess to a plot to kill Stalin, saying, "it is better to leave this earth as an honorable man." Yezhov begged Beria on his knees for a few minutes with Stalin to explain himself, and was repeatedly ignored, finally vowing he would "die with Stalin's name on his lips". When the sentence of death was read, Yezhov fainted and had to be bodily carried from the room.

On February 4, 1940 he was executed by NKVD Chief Executioner Major-General Vasili Blokhin in the basement of a small NKVD station on Varsonofevskii Lane in Moscow. The main NKVD execution chamber in the basement of the Lubyanka was deliberately avoided to ensure total secrecy, since Stalin intended to quietly remove a dangerous and potentially embarrassing hatchet man from his employ, not conduct a show trial in which Yezhov might possibly betray Stalin's secrets or cast a bad light on his apparatus. Yezhov's refusal to confess to a plot to murder Stalin had made him useless for propaganda purposes, and in any case Stalin was clearly seeking to tie up loose ends in his administration, not stage a propaganda coup.^[7] According to a witness, just before the execution Yezhov was ordered to undress himself and then was brutally beaten by guards at the order of Beria, the new NKVD Chief, just as Yezhov had ordered the guards to beat and humiliate his predecessor and former mentor Genrikh Yagoda before his execution only two years prior. Yezhov reportedly had to be carried into the execution chamber semi-conscious, hiccuping and weeping uncontrollably. His ashes were dumped in a common grave at Moscow's Donskoi Cemetery.^[8] The execution remained secret, and as late as 1948, Time reported that “[s]ome think he is still in an insane asylum.″^[9]

References

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Further reading

• Boris I. Nicolaevsky (1975). Power and the Soviet elite: "The letter of an old Bolshevik," and other essays. Ann Arbor, Mich: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-09196-4. 
• Roi Aleksandrovich Medvedev (Author), Harold Shukman (Author) (August 7, 1985). All Stalin's Men. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0631141871. 
• Simon Sebag Montefiore (September 13, 2005). Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Vintage. ISBN 1400076781. 
• Nikita Petrov, Marc Jansen (April 5, 2002). Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940 TLE. Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 0817929029. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Николай Иванович Ежов

• Nikita Petrov, Marc Jansen: Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940 (full text in PDF)