The Story of Nikolai Yezhov:
his rise to power, his purge, prestige, and fall…
“Who is this?” you ask. Well, Nikolai Yezhov is a loyal, Stalin-loving heavy drinker from St. Petersburg. He likes to get shit done but would rather have someone tell him what that shit is than decide it for himself. He is basically a humble henchman, who enjoys his work and the slight tangible power it gives him.
He joins the Red Army, moves up ranks, and eventually becomes the Secretary of Central Committee. Stalin appointed him to falsify accusations against the recently-deceased Bolshevik chief Sergey Kirov. He was then appointed to the Head of the NKVD. Former-Head, Genrikh Yagoda, was too slow in purging, so Yezhov was appointed and made to dispose of him. Yezhov set it up so it looked like Yagoda tried to have Yezhov and Stalin killed, so Yagoda was arrested and tortured in a secret execution chamber that Yezhov had recently ordered to be built in the basement of the Lubyanka building. Yezhov has the guards strip Yagoda naked and beat him, until Stalin whispers in Yezhov’s ear and Yezhov shoots Yagoda in the head.
By Stalin’s command, Yezhov heightens the Great Purge, and kills thousands of possible-anti-Stalinists (people accused of disloyalty based on flimsy evidence; murdered for being “traitors” or “spies”). Yezhov admitted that innocent people died, but said that that was unimportant in the long run, for the Purge was being successful: “There will be some innocent victims in this fight against Fascist agents. We are launching a major attack on the Enemy; let there be no resentment if we bump someone with an elbow. Better that ten innocent people should suffer than one spy get away. When you chop wood, chips fly.” Eventually, around a million and a half people were murdered. The Gulag population swelled by over half a million people, tripling in size in only two years.
Stalin was being tutored how to have reasoned arguments with someone in order to come to an agreeable conclusion… “Jan Sten, philosopher and deputy head of the Marx-Engels Institute, was Stalin's private tutor when Stalin was trying hard to study Hegel's dialectic. (Stalin received lessons twice a week from 1925 to 1928, but he found it difficult to master even some of the basic ideas. Stalin developed enduring hostility toward German idealistic philosophy, which he called ‘the aristocratic reaction to the French Revolution’.) In 1937, Sten was seized on the direct order of Stalin, who declared him one of the chiefs of Menshevizing idealists. On June 19, 1937, Sten was put to death in Lefortovo prison.” But instead of the whole “prison” thing, and since he was put to death anyways, we’ll take creative liberties and condense the timeline to go like this… \/\/\/
Stalin is being tutored in his office, and Yezhov is there. Stalin says “this is so stupid! This is too hard to learn!” or something along those lines. And Sten is like “noo… you’ll get it eventually.” or whatever. Stalin says it’s stupid and that he doesn’t want to learn it. Sten says that he’ll try to slow it down to make it easier to understand. Stalin thinks that Sten is saying that he’s stupid. Sten says that he is definitely not saying that, and he gets real scared. Stalin gets really behind the idea that Sten thinks he’s stupid, and gets angrier and angrier the more he quietly threatens and intimidates him. Sten becomes submissive. Stalin asks one more time if Sten thinks he’s stupid, but phrases it in a way that makes it seem like he’s asking if he needs more tutoring. (“You say I need to do more learning before I can become as capable as men like you?”) Sten says yes. Stalin is calm but seething. Sten realizes he made a bad move. Stalin walks over to Yezhov and whispers something; then Yezhov takes Sten out back and shoots him in the head.
“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. 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.’ Yezhov may well have also realized the danger he was in from such a lavish display of independent public praise; Stalin was always deeply suspicious of the public popularity and political ambitions of his immediate subordinates, and he was present at the event, observing the scene ‘silently and without expression’ from his private box.” Stalin gets jealous; he has always been paranoid… Stalin knows that he must have Yezhov removed from office, and killed—in fact, more than just killed…
Yezhov remains Head of the NKVD, but is also appointed to the post of People’s Commissar for Water Transport. It’s a shitty job regarding water travel/importing/exporting. Basically, “By charging him with the extra job, Stalin killed two birds with one stone: Yezhov could correct the water transportation situation with tough Chekist methods, and his transfer to the terra incognita of economic tasks would leave him less time for the NKVD and weaken his position there, thus creating the possibility that in due course he could be removed from the leadership of the punitive apparatus and replaced by fresh people.” So Yezhov gets distracted with his new job and has less time for being the Head of the NKVD. So the Great Purge slowly dies down. Stalin pulls him aside and tells him that he’s been really busy with the water transport gig and hasn’t been focusing on the purge. Yezhov agrees and suggests that someone else take his job. Stalin says that he was planning on doing that, actually. Yezhov is like “yay!” and Stalin is like “yeah, so now you can focus more on water transport” and Yezhov is like “…wait, what the fuck” and Stalin is like “yeah, you aren’t the Head of the NKVD anymore. Thanks for letting me know you were fine with this plan. I knew I could trust you” or whatever. Yezhov is sad. You see, “Yezhov had accomplished Stalin's intended task for the Great Purge: the public liquidation of the last of his Old Bolshevik political rivals and the elimination of any possibility of ‘disloyal elements’ or ‘fifth columnists’ within the Soviet military and government prior to the onset of war with Germany. From Stalin's perspective, Yezhov (like Yagoda) had served his purpose but had seen too much and wielded too much power for Stalin to allow him to live. The defection of the Far Eastern NKVD chief, G.S. Liushkov to Japan on June 13, 1938, rightly worried Yezhov, who had protected him from the purges and feared he would be blamed.”
“On August 22, 1938 Georgian NKVD leader Lavrenty Beria was named as Yezhov's deputy. Beria had managed to survive the Great Purge and the ‘Yezhovshchina’ during the years 1936-1938, even though he had almost become one of its victims. Earlier in 1938, Yezhov had even ordered the arrest of Beria, who was party chief in Georgia. However, Georgian NKVD chief, Sergei Goglidze, warned Beria, who immediately flew to Moscow to see Stalin personally. Beria convinced Stalin to spare his life and reminded Stalin how efficiently he had carried out party orders in Georgia and Transcaucasia.” (This all happened earlier, as in, after Yezhov became head of water transport, but before he lost the title of the Head of the NKVD.) “In an ironic twist of fate, it would be Yezhov who would eventually fall in the struggle for power, and Beria who would become the new NKVD chief.” “Over the following months, Beria (with Stalin's approval) began increasingly to usurp Yezhov's governance of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs. As early as September 8, Mikhail Frinovsky, Yezhov's first deputy, was relocated from under his command into the Navy. 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.” (Yezhov had done the same “penchant of Stalin” back when he started the Great Purge.) Naturally, Yezhov knew his downfall was imminent. He was a heavy drinker, but now he REALLY hit the bottle… and he became a drunkard too slovenly and comatose to show up to work. Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov (yeah, who the Molotov Cocktail was named after) openly criticize his work and methods, allowing pretense for his removal from office… (Stalin and Molotov are seen together a lot in the film, because they were true buds).
Soon later, another of Yezhov’s protégés goes missing after Yezhov tells him to run. Stalin tells Beria to find and assassinate him. Beria succeeds. Yezhov’s wife, Yevgenia Feigenburg, is terrified of being assassinated, so she kills herself by overdosing on sleeping pills. Yezhov wanted a divorce, anyways… Soon thereafter, Yezhov steps down from his post as People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs. Beria takes this position from him, too. Stalin then ignores Yezhov for a long time, until he decided to just strip Yezhov of all of his positions in the government except for the fucking Head of Water Transport post; the one that got him his leading job taken from him. (Stalin’s a huge dick—ESPECIALLY because, a month later, Stalin divides the Water Transport post into two; Head of the River Fleet and Head of the Sea Fleet. He gave both positions to two new people, leaving Yezhov jobless. Stalin did that for shits and giggles, because that position really didn’t need to be split. It really didn’t…)
The next day, Yezhov is arrested. He was brought to Sukhanovka Prison, which is worse than Lubyanka and Lefortovo. Stalin keeps the arrest a secret, because the public and even the officers all love Yezhov (I haven’t figured out why yet… he was a mass-murderer…) and he doesn’t want everyone freaking out about it. Yezhov broke quickly under torture (after being slowly broken down over time, by depression and drinking, he succumbed easily) and “the standard litany of state 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. Apart from these unlikely political crimes, he also confessed to a humiliating history of sexual deviancy, both homosexual and heterosexual.” The torturers basically forced all these answers out of him, and the homosexual relations bit was personally forced out of him by Beria.
“On February 2, 1940, Yezhov was tried by the Military Collegium chaired by Soviet judge Vasili Ulrikh behind closed doors. Yezhov, like his predecessor Yagoda, mournfully maintained to the end his love for Stalin. Yezhov denied being a spy, a terrorist, or a conspirator stating that he preferred ‘death to telling lies.’ He maintained that his previous confession had been obtained under torture, but admitted that he purged 14,000 of his fellow Chekists stating that he was surrounded by ‘enemies of the people.’ He also stated that he would die with the name of Stalin on his lips. After the secret trial, Yezhov was allowed to return to his cell but half an hour later he was called back and told that he had been condemned to death. On hearing the verdict, Yezhov became faint and began to collapse, but the guards caught him and removed him from the room. An immediate appeal for clemency was declined, and Yezhov became hysterical and behaved in a cowardly fashion, weeping. This time he had to be dragged out of the room, struggling with the guards and screaming horribly.” Basically, Yezhov proclaimed his love for Stalin the whole time (which was real) and Stalin’s courts just blamed the whole Purge on him, saying that it was his idea that he got after killing Yagoda (which was all Stalin’s ideas); it’s the classic love story of someone betraying someone who loves them unconditionally.
“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 Yagoda before his execution only two years before. Yezhov had to be carried into the execution chamber semi-conscious, hiccupping and weeping uncontrollably.” Yezhov was brought to the exact same execution chamber that he had personally requested be built to his specifications underneath Lubyanka. His whole death is ironic: Stalin came in as Beria broke Yezhov down even more. Yezhov repeatedly asked why this was happening, and Stalin explains he didn’t want to share power or prestige, and he was a perfect scapegoat anyhow… Anyone who becomes too powerful or too beloved by the public has to be gotten rid of. Yezhov sobs, because he did “too good” of a job. Then, Stalin whispers in Beria’s ear and Beria raises a gun to Yezhov’s head and pulls the trigger. - Yezhov’s corpse is cremated and dumped in a mass grave. The public all assumes that he is in an asylum, since the drinking and depression might have well put him there. Stalin’s use of Yezhov as a scapegoat allows Stalin to end the Purge while asserting plausible deniability of his direction over it. Stalin declares damnatio memoriae on Yezhov, meaning he has all evidence of his existence quietly censored from State records and publications. This is a fate normally reserved for only the highest-ranking and most prominent of Stalin’s political enemies; Yezhov had become one of the few people Stalin feared—a real accomplishment. The damnatio memoriae led to the erasure of Yezhov from many photographs and documents, the most notable being the “The Commissar Vanishes” photo…
This film (or miniseries?) focuses on Yezhov not as a bad guy (even though he really, really was) but as a guy being exploited by Stalin—the one-way relationship between them. Yezhov is the epitome of a scapegoat, and a definition of a person “betrayed by those he loves unconditionally”. It is a sad fate, for Yezhov got the blame for millions and millions of deaths, and those people died only because ‘rumor said’ they may have opposed Stalin. Yezhov was Stalin’s main tool for genocide—the operator and trigger-man—and he was felled by the same blade he spent years sharpening, and then blamed for the blade existing; blamed for a mass-extermination he may have once led the organization of, but a mass-extermination Stalin ordered long before him and ended well after him.
at some point in the beginning of his time as Head of the NKVD, have him burst into a dinner party and arrest the group; 3 months later, the imprisoned women still have their bedraggled evening dresses on. (True story; see: Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror, pg. 236.)
June 1937: a plenum is held on whether to grant Yezhov and the NVKD extraordinary powers. “Pyatnitsky spoke strongly against it, and said that, on the contrary, the NKVD was out of hand and should be more tightly controlled. During the break, several members of the Central Committee advised him to withdraw his statement, and Molotov suggested that he should think of his wife and family. However, he stuck to his guns. The next day, Yezhov announced that the NKVD had evidence of Pyatnitsky having been an agent of the Tsarist police. Krupskaya defended his character on the grounds that Lenin had regarded him as one of the best Bolsheviks. Yezhov proposed a vote of censure against Pyatnitsky. Kaminsky and Krupskaya voted against. Stalin asked why Pyatnitsky did not say what he thought about this. Pyatnitsky then said that if he was not needed he would go, and left. On 7 July, he was arrested.” (Pyat.’s wife and sons were also arrested: wife killed in secret, eldest son in a labor camp for many years, and youngest son in an NKVD children’s home.) (The Great Terror, pg. 238.)
Yezhov received the Order of Lenin on 18 July, resulting in national celebration. He also got a town named after him. (Terror 239.)
one scene during the purges: an interrogation is taking place, and the accused is very resilient and will not sign the false confession. Yezhov’s torture thus far has not been working on him (the Conveyor, stoika, etcetera—see Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror, pages 121-131, for Soviet torture methods). So Yezhov brings-in the man’s 16-year-old daughter and has an NKVD agent rape her right in front of the man. The man gives-in and signs the confession. (Terror 127.)
include a man who learns he will be arrested, but Yezhov chooses to wait and let the terror of not knowing ‘when’ that will occur. The man waits for 3 months on a balcony, in fear. (that psychological torture hurt him more than the interrogation.) also, Yezhov searches an inmate and finds a piece of cloth inside her clothes where a bit of black bread and a piece of paper were hidden. The paper had on it eight verses from the Bible. (can be condensed to only one verse for emphasis?) (Terror 241.)
(Terror 264-270 for description of prisons during Yezhovshchina.)
(Terror 270-290 for “criminal types,” interrogation, and “trial.”)
Trotsky’s assassination should be included, as Yezhov ordered it. Twas a brutal icepick-to-the-head stabbing while he was on exile in Mexico City. (Terror 416-418.)
(Terror 422 – Yezhov had put Beria on the execution list; Molotov waived it (they were friends) and ironically Beria was later promoted to Head of NKVD, Yezhov’s old job.)
(Terror 431 – “The Fall of Yezhov.”)
NOTE: Expect a podcast episode on this.
Original document created 11/28/2012.