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Nikolai Yezhov

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

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (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", Ежовщина, the "Yezhov era").

Biography

His character

Yezhov was born in Saint Petersburg according to his official Soviet biography, though he stated he was born in Mariiampole, Lithuania. He completed only 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; 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, 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 - 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. 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. Under Yezhov, the purges reached their height, with roughly half of the Soviet political and military establishment being imprisoned or shot, along with hundreds of thousands of others, suspected of disloyalty or "wrecking". Yezhov also conducted a thorough purge of the security organs, both NKVD and GRU, removing and shooting many officials who had been appointed by his predecessors Yagoda and Menzhinsky, but even his own appointees as well. He maintained that it was worth having ten innocent people suffer rather than letting one spy get away.

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 every Soviet citizen should be an NKVD agent. When presented, Yezhov received an "uproarious greeting". 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 observed the scene from his private box.

Decline and fall

Yezhov was appointed to the post of People's Commissar for Water Transport on April 8, 1938. While maintaining his other posts, his role as grand inquisitor was gradually diminishing as Stalin now retreated from the worst excesses of the Great Purge in an effort to preserve remaining manpower for the looming conflict with Germany. Stalin's penchant for periodically purging the upper levels of his executive apparatus to maximize secrecy and reaffirm his life-and-death hold over Party operations was well known to Yezhov, who had largely been responsible for orchestrating such actions. On August 22, 1938, Lavrenty Beria became the deputy and partner to Yezhov and began to increasingly usurp the governance of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Yezhov, well familiar with the Stalinist bureaucratic precursors to an eventual arrest and summary execution for treason, saw the writing on the wall and plunged himself even more fully into his long-time alcoholism. In the last months of his service, he reportedly was disconsolate, slovenly, and drunk nearly all of his waking hours, and rarely bothered to show up to work. Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, in their writing of November 11, 1938, heavily criticized the work and methods of the NKVD. Yezhov was finally officially relieved of his post as the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs at his own request on November 25, 1938, and Beria succeeded him.

Stalin was evidently content to ignore Yezhov for several months, finally giving Beria the cue to denounce him at the annual State Presidium. 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 could not tolerate torture, and quickly confessed to the usual litany of crimes, including "wrecking", official incompetence, and collaboration with German spies and saboteurs. He also confessed to a history of sexual deviancy, both homosexual and heterosexual, that was 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 the Generalissimo 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. 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 also made him less useful for propaganda purposes. According to a witness, just before the execution Yezhov was ordered to undress himself and then was beaten by guards at the order of Beria, the new NKVD Chief, just as Yezhov had ordered the guards to beat his predecessor Yagoda before his execution only two years prior. Yezhov reportedly had to be carried bodily into the execution chamber, hiccuping and weeping uncontrollably. His ashes were dumped in a common grave at Donskoi Cemetery.

References

(1975). Power and the Soviet elite: "The letter of an old Bolshevik," and other essays. Ann Arbor, Mich: University of Michigan Press.
All Stalin's Men. Blackwell Publishers.
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Vintage.
Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940 TLE. Hoover Institution Press.