Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (born April 19 (May 1) 1895 - February 4, 1940) - Soviet state and party leader, head of the Stalinist NKVD, member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), candidate for members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, People's Commissar of Water Transport of the USSR. The era of his leadership of the punitive organs went down in history under the name "Yezhovschina".
Origin. early years
Nikolay - was born in St. Petersburg in the family of a foundry worker in 1895. His father came from the Tula province (the village of Volokhonshchino near Plavsk), but when he entered the military service in Lithuania, he married a Lithuanian and stayed there. According to the official Soviet biography, N. I. Yezhov was born in St. Petersburg, but, according to archival data, it is more likely that the place of his birth was Suwalki province (on the border of Lithuania and Poland).
He graduated from the 1st grade of primary school, later, in 1927, attended courses in Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and from the age of 14 he worked as a tailor's apprentice, locksmith, worker in a bed factory and at the Putilov factory.
Service. Party career
1915 - Yezhov was drafted into the army, and a year later he was fired due to injury. At the end of 1916 he returned to the front, served in the 3rd reserve infantry regiment and in 5 artillery workshops of the Northern Front. 1917, May - joined the RSDLP (b) (Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party).
Promotional video:
1917, November - Yezhov commands the Red Guard detachment, and in 1918-1919 he heads the communist club at the Volotin plant. Also in 1919 he joined the ranks of the Red Army, served as the secretary of the party committee of the military subdistrict in Saratov. During the Civil War, Yezhov was a military commissar for several Red Army units.
1921 Yezhoav is transferred to party work. 1921, July - Nikolai Ivanovich married the Marxist Antonina Titova. For his "intransigence" to the party opposition, he was quickly promoted up the career ladder.
1922, March - he holds the post of secretary of the Mari regional committee of the RCP (b), and since October he becomes secretary of the Semipalatinsk provincial committee, then head of a department of the Tatar regional committee, secretary of the Kazakh regional committee of the CPSU (b).
Meanwhile, Basmachism, a national movement that opposed Soviet rule, arose on the territory of Central Asia. Ezhov Nikolai Ivanovich led the suppression of Basmachism in Kazakhstan.
Soldier Nikolai Yezhov (right) in Vitebsk. 1916 g.
Transfer to Moscow
1927 - Nikolai Yezhov is transferred to Moscow. During the internal party struggles of the 1920s and 1930s, he always supported Stalin and was now rewarded for this. He went up quite quickly: in 1927, he became deputy head of the accounting and distribution department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in 1929-1930, he became the People's Commissar of Agriculture of the Soviet Union, took part in collectivization and dispossession. 1930, November - he is the head of the distribution department, the personnel department, the industrial department of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).
1934 - Stalin appoints Yezhov chairman of the Central Commission for the Purge of the Party, and in 1935 he becomes Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).
In the "Letter of the Old Bolshevik" (1936), written by Boris Nikolaevsky, there is a description of Yezhov as he was in those days:
In all my long life, I have never met such a repulsive person as Yezhov. When I look at him, I remember the ugly boys from Rasteryaeva Street, whose favorite pastime was to tie a piece of paper soaked in kerosene to the tail of a cat, set it on fire, and then watch with delight how the horrified animal will rush along the street, desperately, but in vain trying to escape the approaching fire. I have no doubt that as a child, Yezhov used to amuse himself in this way, and that he continues to do something similar now.
Yezhov was short (151 cm). Those who knew about his inclinations to sadism called him among themselves the Poisonous Dwarf or the Bloody Dwarf.
Yezhovshchina
The turning point in the life of Nikolai Ivanovich was the assassination of the communist governor of Leningrad, Kirov. Stalin used this murder as a pretext for intensifying political repression, and he made Yezhov their main conductor. Nikolai Ivanovich actually began to lead the investigation into the murder of Kirov and helped to fabricate accusations of the involvement of former leaders of the party opposition - Kamenev, Zinoviev and others - in him. The Bloody Dwarf was present at the execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev and the bullets with which they were shot, he kept as souvenirs.
When Yezhov was able to brilliantly cope with this task, Stalin elevated him even more.
1936, September 26 - after the removal of Yagoda Genrikh Grigorievich, Yezhov becomes the head of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) and a member of the Central Committee. Such an appointment, at first glance, could not imply an intensification of terror: unlike Yagoda, Yezhov was not closely associated with the "organs". Yagoda fell out of favor because he delayed repressions against the old Bolsheviks, who wanted to strengthen the leader. But for Yezhov, who had risen only recently, the rout of the old Bolshevik cadres and the destruction of Yagoda himself - potential or imaginary enemies of Stalin - did not present personal difficulties. Nikolai Ivanovich was personally devoted to the Leader of the Nations, and not to Bolshevism and not to the organs of the NKVD. It was just such a candidate that Stalin needed at that time.
On Stalin's instructions, the new people's commissar carried out a purge of Yagoda's henchmen - almost all of them were arrested and shot. During the years when Yezhov headed the NKVD (1936-1938), the Great Stalinist purge reached its climax. 50-75% of the members of the Supreme Soviet and officers of the Soviet army were removed from their posts, sent to prisons, gulag camps or were executed. "Enemies of the people", suspected of counter-revolutionary activities, and simply "inconvenient" for the leader of the people were ruthlessly destroyed. In order to pass the death sentence, the corresponding record of the investigator was sufficient.
As a result of the purges, people who had considerable work experience were shot or put in camps - those who could at least slightly normalize the situation in the state. For example, the repressions among the military were very painful during the Great Patriotic War: among the high military command there were almost no those who had practical experience in organizing and conducting military operations.
Under the tireless leadership of N. I. Yezhov, a lot of cases were fabricated, the largest falsified show political trials were carried out.
A lot of ordinary Soviet citizens were accused (usually based on contrived and non-existent "evidence") of treason or "sabotage". The "troikas" who passed sentences on the ground were equal to arbitrary numbers of executions and imprisonment, which were descended from above by Stalin and Yezhov. The People's Commissar knew that most of the accusations against his victims were false, but human life for him had no value. The Bloody Dwarf spoke openly:
There will be innocent victims in this fight against fascist agents. We are conducting a large offensive against the enemy, and let them not be offended if we hit someone with our elbows. Better to let dozens of innocents suffer than to miss one spy. The forest is being cut down - the chips are flying.
Arrest
Yezhov expected the fate of his predecessor Yagoda. 1939 - he was arrested on the denunciation of the head of the NKVD department for the Ivanovo region V. P. Zhuravleva. The charges against him included the preparation of terrorist attacks against Stalin and homosexuality. Fearing torture, during interrogation, the former people's commissar pleaded guilty to all counts
1940, February 2 - the former people's commissar was tried in a closed session by the Military Collegium chaired by Vasily Ulrich. Yezhov, like his predecessor, Yagoda, swore to the end his love for Stalin. He denied being a spy, terrorist and conspirator, saying that he "prefers death to lies." He began to assert that his previous confessions had been knocked out by torture (“they applied severe beatings to me”). His only mistake, he admitted, was that he “did little to cleanse” the state security organs of “enemies of the people”:
I cleaned 14 thousand Chekists, but my huge fault is that I cleaned them a little … I will not deny that I was drinking, but I worked like an ox … If I wanted to carry out a terrorist act on one of the members of the government, I would not have recruited anyone for this purpose, but, using technology, I would have done this heinous deed at any moment.
In conclusion, he said that he would die with Stalin's name on his lips.
After the court session, Yezhov was taken to a cell, and half an hour later he was summoned again to announce his death sentence. Hearing him, Yezhov went limp and fainted, but the guards managed to catch him and took him out of the room. The request for pardon was rejected, and the Poisonous Dwarf fell into hysterics and crying. When they led him out of the room again, he pulled himself out of the hands of the guards and yelled.
Execution
1940, February 4 - Yezhov was shot by the future chairman of the KGB Ivan Serov (according to another version - Chekist Blokhin). They were shot in the basement of a small section of the NKVD in Varsonofyevsky Lane (Moscow). This basement had sloped floors for draining and flushing blood. Such floors were made in accordance with the previous instructions of the Bloody Dwarf himself. For the execution of the former People's Commissar, they did not use the main death chamber of the NKVD in the basements of the Lubyanka, to guarantee complete secrecy.
According to the prominent Chekist P. Sudoplatov, when Yezhov was taken to execution, he sang "Internationale".
Yezhov's body was immediately cremated, and the ashes were thrown into a common grave at the Moscow Donskoy cemetery. The execution was not officially reported. The People's Commissar simply quietly disappeared. Even in the late 1940s, some believed that the former people's commissar was in an insane asylum.
After death
In the decision on the case of Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR (1998) stated that “as a result of operations that were carried out by the NKVD in accordance with Yezhov's orders, in 1937-1938 alone more than 1.5 million citizens, about half of them were shot. The number of GULAG prisoners has almost tripled over the 2 years of Yezhovism. Not less than 140 thousand of them (and perhaps much more) have died over the years from hunger, cold and backbreaking work in the camps or on the way to them.
Having attached the label “Yezhovism” to the repression, the propagandists tried to shift the entire blame for them from Stalin to Yezhov. But, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, the Bloody Dwarf was, rather, a doll, an executor of Stalin's will, but otherwise it simply could not be.