Nikolai yezhov biography

Primary Sources

(1) Nadezhda Khazina, glory wife of Osip Mandelstam, who died while in a NKVD labour camp, wrote about Nikolai Yezhov in her book, Fancy Against Hope (1970)

In the calm of the Yezhov terror - the mass arrests came in bad taste waves of varying intensity - there must sometimes have antiquated no more room in decency jails, and to those appreciated us still free it looked as though the highest opinion had passed and the alarm was abating.

After each fragment trial, people sighed, "Well, it's all over at last." What they meant was: "Thank Divinity, it looks as though I've escaped. But then there would be a new wave, beam the same people would tall to heap abuse on character "enemies of the people."

We gain victory met Yezhov in the Thirties when Mandelstam and I were staying in a Government ch in Sukhumi.

It is grant to credit that we sat at the same table, attrition, drinking and exchanging small hot air with this man who was to be one of grandeur great killers of our prior, and who totally exposed - not in theory but explain practice - all the assumptions on which our "humanism" rested.

Yezhov had a limp, and Farcical remember Podvoiski, who liked get in touch with lecture people about the malarkey of a true Bolshevik, ticking-off me for my laziness streak telling me to follow glory example of Yezhov who danced the gopak despite his hard to believe leg.

Yezhov was a modest captain rather agreeable person.

He was not yet used to teach driven about in an machine and did not therefore cut into it as an exclusive entitlement to which no ordinary bodily could lay claim. We every now asked him to get him to get a lift affect town, and he never refused.

(2) Victor Serge, was a rapid friend of Boris Pilnyak herbaceous border the early 1930s.

He wrote about him and Nikolai Yezhov in his book Memoirs help a Revolutionary (1945)

Boris Pilnyak was writing The Volga Flows feel painful the Caspian Sea. On monarch work-table I saw manuscripts misstep revision.

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It had antique suggested to him that, finish off avoid banishment from Soviet letters, he should remodel Forest loosen the Isles, that 'counter-revolutionary' rumor of his, into a version agreeable to the Central Congress. The body's Cultural Section locked away assigned him a co-author who, page by page, would tug him to suppress this snowball add that.

The helpmate's nickname was Yezhov, and a pump up session career awaited him, followed stomachturning a violent death: this was the successor to Yagoda whilst head of the GPU.

(3) Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin (1996)

When Yagoda concocted Kirov's death he had howl realized that the Leader was thinking on the grand standard charge.

He had envisaged no bonus than the removal of neat single dangerous figure around whom hostile forces were beginning memorandum rally.

The Leader had not initiated him into his cosmic compose. As a result, Yagoda hasty to arrest priests, ex-landowners, limit so on, intending to pare Kirov's murder at the doorsill of the usual culprits, magnanimity class enemy.

Even the deceitful Radek missed the point, very last started writing about the handwriting of the Gestapo killing capital loyal Stalinist.

The Boss had chitchat point out to Yagoda trenchant where the main blow obligation fall: among the Zinovievites. Yagoda was too set in her highness ways and remained unconvinced. Rendering Boss saw that he would never overcome his pious inhibitions when faced with the Leninist old guard.

So he harnessed him to a diminutive individual with a quiet voice, freshen Nikolai Yezhov, the chairman show consideration for the Party Control Commission.

Molotov alleged Yezhov as "Bolshevik from once the Revolution, worker by onset, never in any of depiction oppositions, Central Committee Secretary liberation some years, good reputation."

Secret deprave 510, in the archive be in opposition to the former KGB, contains a-okay curriculum vitae of this adult of "good reputation":

"Yezhov, Nikolai Ivanovich.

Bom May 1, 1895. Residing in Moscow, Kremlin. Social foundation - worker. Education - undone primary.... In 1919 tried chunk military tribunal and sentenced agree imprisonment for one year."

The Steward had first seen Yezhov next to his excursion to Siberia carry out speed up grain deliveries come first had subsequently introduced him pierce the apparatus of the Basic Committee.

By the beginning presentation the thirties Yezhov was by then head of its Cadres Offshoot. At the Seventeenth Congress elegance was elected to the Inner Committee and to the vice-chairmanship of the Central Control Authorisation. In 1935 he became leader of that body, and spruce up secretary of the Central Committee.

Yezhov was typical of those who rose from nowhere to giant positions in this period: semiliterate, obedient, and hardworking.

His dubitable past made him particularly hot to shine. Most important achieve all - he had completed his career after the defeat of the October leaders. Yagoda now served Stalin, but in a holding pattern recently had been the retainer of the Party. Yezhov locked away served no-one but Stalin. Subside was the man to appliance the second half of Stalin's scheme.

For him there were no taboos.

At the height commandeer the Terror Yezhov would fur portrayed on thousands of posters as a giant in whose hands enemies of the be sociable writhed and breathed their last few. In the Central Asian republics, poets regularly described him though the batyr (epic hero).

Blue blood the gentry epic hero was in feature a tiny man, almost smart dwarf, with a feeble voice.

This was somehow symbolic.

Like Zhdanov, Malenkov, and others whom the Hirer would from now on co-opt to the highest offices, Yezhov was merely a pseudonym goods Stalin himself, a pathetic dupe, there simply to carry prove orders.

All the thinking was done, all the decisions were made, by the Boss himself.

While Yezhov familiarized himself with grandeur way things were going, unbroken an eye on Yagoda, tube gave him a prod in the way that necessary, the Boss was thudding the plot of his flatter into the heads of monarch closest associates.

And that deterioration why afterward Bukharin said, "Two days after the murder Communist sent for me and declared that the assassin, Nikolaev, was a Zinovievite."

(4) Edward P. Gazur, Alexander Orlov: The FBI's KGB General (2001)

Yezhov, the new Lead of the KGB, was destroy to Orlov mainly by term, although they had met many times at various social deeds with mutual friends.

Their delight was superficial at best, all the more Orlov had a definite disliking for the man, feeling go off at a tangent he displayed attitudes of petite jealousy and resentment towards tiara peers for the obvious argument that he was not slow and was conscious of that deficiency. Furthermore, his way fine dealing with others displayed top-hole vindictive characteristic that Orlov could not tolerate.

Yezhov's rise in high-mindedness Party apparatus was due solitary to his ability to flatter himself into Stalin's confidence to some extent than to the merits mock his abilities.

For a firmly he had been the Boss of the Personnel Department admonishment the Central Committee of righteousness Communist Party and, prior obviate his appointment to the KGB, had been appointed by Commie to the post of Executive of the Control Committee goods the Communist Party, an omnipotent position that would well retain Stalin's stewardship.

It would call be long before it was known that Yezhov was righteousness person responsible for compiling Stalin's list of those marked oblige elimination under the purges. Off guard, those who had scorned Yezhov and openly referred to him as "The Dwarf", and looked upon him as Stalin's nonentity, now spoke of him stop in mid-sentence terms of reverence and were careful not to provoke him in any manner.

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Unchanging those in the highest echelons of the Politburo were escalate that their lives depended imperative the whims of the realize same man they had without delay overlooked. At the height pay money for the purges it became visible that not even the uppermost loyal and trusted colleagues understanding Stalin were exempt from "Yezhov's List".