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Nikolai Yezhov

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈɫaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ (j)ɪˈʐof]; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell from Stalin's favour and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge.

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Ivanovich and the family name is Yezhov.

Nikolai Yezhov

Vyacheslav Molotov

Genrikh Yagoda

Lavrentiy Beria

Lazar Kaganovich

Andrey Andreyev

Vyacheslav Molotov

Nikolay Pakhomov

None (position abolished)

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov

(1895-05-01)1 May 1895
St. Petersburg, Russian Empire

4 February 1940(1940-02-04) (aged 44)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union

Execution by shooting

Soviet

Russian/All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1917–1939)

Antonia Titova
​
​
(m. 1919; div. 1930)​
Yevgenia Feigenberg
​
​
(m. 1930; died 1938)​

1 (adopted)

Ежевика (Yezhevika; "Blackberry")[2]
Iron Hedgehog[3]
The Bloody Dwarf[4]
The Red Dwarf[4]

Fall from power[edit]

Yezhov was appointed People's Commissar for Water Transport on 6 April 1938. During the Great Purge, acting on the orders from Stalin, he had accomplished liquidation of Old Bolsheviks and other potentially "disloyal elements" or "fifth columnists" within the Soviet military and government prior to the onset of war with Germany. The defection to Japan of the Far Eastern NKVD chief, Genrikh Lyushkov, on 13 June 1938, rightly worried Yezhov, who had earlier protected Lyushkov from the purges and now feared that he would be blamed for disloyalty.[24]

Order of Lenin

Order of the Red Banner (Mongolia)

Badge of "Honorary Security Officer"

A decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on 24 January 1941 deprived Yezhov of all state and special awards.

Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)

Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union

Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies

Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s

, the second volume in an extensive three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin

Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941

Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization

(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.

Nicolaevsky, Boris I.

; Shukman, Harold (7 August 1985). All Stalin's Men. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-14187-1.

Medvedev, Roy Aleksandrovich

(13 September 2005). Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Vintage. ISBN 1-4000-7678-1.

Montefiore, Simon Sebag

; Jansen, Marc (5 April 2002). Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940 TLE. Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 0-8179-2902-9.

Petrov, Nikita

; Naumov, Oleg V. (2008). Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin's "Iron Fist". Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09205-9.

Getty, J. Arch

Nikita Petrov, Marc Jansen: Archived 29 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine (full text in PDF)

Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940

Interrogations of Nikolai Ezhov, former People's Commissar for Internal Affairs

at the Index on Censorship website (includes airbrushed images of the Vanishing Commissar)

"The Commissar Vanishes: The falsification of images in Stalin's Russia"