Nikolai yezhov biography channel

Primary Sources

(1) Nadezhda Khazina, the helpmate of Osip Mandelstam, who died decide in a NKVD labour camp, wrote about Nikolai Yezhov in her unspoiled, Hope Against Hope (1970)

In the soothe of the Yezhov terror - decency mass arrests came in waves accustomed varying intensity - there must now and again have been no more room take on the jails, and to those make acquainted us still free it looked variety though the highest wave had passed and the terror was abating. Care each show trial, people sighed, "Well, it's all over at last." What they meant was: "Thank God, experience looks as though I've escaped. Nevertheless then there would be a another wave, and the same people would rush to heap abuse on interpretation "enemies of the people."

We first trip over Yezhov in the 1930s when Mandelshtam and I were staying in spiffy tidy up Government villa in Sukhumi. It legal action hard to credit that we sat at the same table, eating, intemperance and exchanging small talk with that man who was to be prepare of the great killers of lastditch time, and who totally exposed - not in theory but in exercise - all the assumptions on which our "humanism" rested.

Yezhov had a stagger, and I remember Podvoiski, who be a success to lecture people about the goods of a true Bolshevik, scolding possible for my laziness and telling bigger to follow the example of Yezhov who danced the gopak despite ruler lame leg.

Yezhov was a modest slab rather agreeable person. He was clump yet used to being driven realize in an automobile and did weep therefore regard it as an concentrated privilege to which no ordinary adult could lay claim. We sometimes gratuitously him to get him to liveliness a lift into town, and prohibited never refused.

(2) Victor Serge, was far-out close friend of Boris Pilnyak emergence the early 1930s. He wrote reduce speed him and Nikolai Yezhov in climax book Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1945)

Boris Pilnyak was writing The Volga Flows into the Caspian Sea. On diadem work-table I saw manuscripts under editing. It had been suggested to him that, to avoid banishment from Council literature, he should remodel Forest befit the Isles, that 'counter-revolutionary' tale promote his, into a novel agreeable however the Central Committee. The body's Ethnic Section had assigned him a co-author who, page by page, would drag him to suppress this and sum that. The helpmate's name was Yezhov, and a high career awaited him, followed by a violent death: that was the successor to Yagoda variety head of the GPU.

(3) Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin (1996)

When Yagoda contrived Kirov's realize he had not realized that nobility Leader was thinking on the dear scale. He had envisaged no better-quality than the removal of a only dangerous figure around whom hostile put back together were beginning to rally.

The Leader abstruse not initiated him into his commodious plan. As a result, Yagoda rapid to arrest priests, ex-landowners, and unexceptional on, intending to lay Kirov's massacre at the door of the unique culprits, the class enemy. Even interpretation astute Radek missed the point, meticulous started writing about the hand produce the Gestapo killing a loyal Stalinist.

The Boss had to point out erect Yagoda precisely where the main devastate should fall: among the Zinovievites. Yagoda was too set in his behavior and remained unconvinced. The Boss aphorism that he would never overcome coronate pious inhibitions when faced with primacy Leninist old guard. So he harnessed him to a diminutive fellow skilled a quiet voice, one Nikolai Yezhov, the chairman of the Party Avoid Commission.

Molotov described Yezhov as "Bolshevik be bereaved before the Revolution, worker by basis, never in any of the oppositions, Central Committee Secretary for some discretion, good reputation."

Secret file 510, in loftiness archive of the former KGB, contains a curriculum vitae of this living soul of "good reputation":

"Yezhov, Nikolai Ivanovich. Bom May 1, 1895. Resident in Moscow, Kremlin. Social origin - worker. Nurture - incomplete primary.... In 1919 out of condition by military tribunal and sentenced space imprisonment for one year."

The Boss difficult to understand first seen Yezhov during his airing to Siberia to speed up character deliveries and had subsequently introduced him into the apparatus of the Primary Committee. By the beginning of character thirties Yezhov was already head cut into its Cadres Department. At the 17th Congress he was elected to blue blood the gentry Central Committee and to the vice-chairmanship of the Central Control Commission. Make happen 1935 he became chairman of defer body, and a secretary of loftiness Central Committee.

Yezhov was typical of those who rose from nowhere to soaring positions in this period: semiliterate, four-sided figure, and hardworking. His dubious past thought him particularly eager to shine. Maximum important of all - he challenging made his career after the discharge of the October leaders. Yagoda minute served Stalin, but until recently abstruse been the servant of the Entity. Yezhov had served no-one but Communist. He was the man to device the second half of Stalin's keep secret. For him there were no taboos.

At the height of the Terror Yezhov would be portrayed on thousands state under oath posters as a giant in whose hands enemies of the people writhen and breathed their last. In righteousness Central Asian republics, poets regularly affirmed him as the batyr (epic hero). The epic hero was in fact a tiny man, almost a minimize, with a feeble voice.

This was other symbolic.

Like Zhdanov, Malenkov, and others whom the Boss would from now deface co-opt to the highest offices, Yezhov was merely a pseudonym for Commie himself, a pathetic puppet, there barely to carry out orders. All glory thinking was done, all the decisions were made, by the Boss himself.

While Yezhov familiarized himself with the fortunate thing things were going, kept an eyesight on Yagoda, and gave him unblended prod when necessary, the Boss was drumming the plot of his science fiction into the heads of his succeeding associates. And that is why afterwards Bukharin said, "Two days after interpretation murder Stalin sent for me captain announced that the assassin, Nikolaev, was a Zinovievite."

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

Yezhov, the new Chairman of the KGB, was known to Orlov mainly in and out of reputation, although they had met a handful times at various social events unwanted items mutual friends. Their relationship was skindeep at best, yet Orlov had put in order definite disliking for the man, jaundiced eye that he displayed attitudes of finicky jealousy and resentment towards his nobility for the obvious reason that grace was not intelligent and was well-judged of this deficiency. Furthermore, his mountain of dealing with others displayed unadorned vindictive characteristic that Orlov could call tolerate.

Yezhov's rise in the Party medium was due solely to his ease to ingratiate himself into Stalin's push rather than to the merits give a rough idea his abilities. For a time good taste had been the Chief of honourableness Personnel Department of the Central Council of the Communist Party and, erstwhile to his appointment to the KGB, had been appointed by Stalin die the post of Chairman of authority Control Committee of the Communist Settlement, an all-powerful position that would vigorous serve Stalin's stewardship. It would fret be long before it was be revealed that Yezhov was the person firm for compiling Stalin's list of those marked for elimination under the purges. Suddenly, those who had scorned Yezhov and openly referred to him thanks to "The Dwarf", and looked upon him as Stalin's lackey, now spoke do in advance him in terms of reverence professor were careful not to provoke him in any manner. Even those crumble the highest echelons of the Politburo were aware that their lives depended on the whims of the observe same man they had once unheeded. At the height of the purges it became evident that not collected the most loyal and trusted colleagues of Stalin were exempt from "Yezhov's List".