Nikolai Yezhov

Nikolai Yezhov 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 (that he later claimed was taken under torture) 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. Yezhov became a revolutionary while studying economics, and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party in 1906. He was a member of the Moscow committee of the party and participated in the October Revolution of 1917. He held various posts in the party and the state, and became close to Stalin in the early 1930s. He was appointed as the head of the party Control Commission in 1934, and as the chief of the NKVD in 1936. He replaced Genrikh Yagoda, who was later executed as an enemy of the people. Yezhov oversaw the expansion of the NKVD and its repressive activities, which resulted in the arrest, imprisonment, exile or execution of millions of people, including many prominent Bolsheviks and military leaders. He was also involved in the persecution of ethnic minorities, such as Poles, Germans, Koreans and others. Yezhov was known as "the bloody dwarf" or "the iron hedgehog" for his cruelty and short stature. He was also notorious for his personal corruption, alcoholism and sexual promiscuity. He had several wives and mistresses, some of whom were also executed or imprisoned. He adopted a daughter, Svetlana, from his second wife Yevgenia, who died in a suspicious car accident in 1938. He married his third wife, Anna Larina, a young Communist activist, in 1939. She was arrested shortly after his downfall and spent 20 years in prison camps. She later wrote a memoir about her life with Yezhov. Yezhov's power and influence began to decline in 1938, as Stalin grew distrustful of him and his associates. He was replaced by Lavrentiy Beria as the head of the NKVD in November 1938, and was expelled from the party and the Politburo in March 1939. He was arrested in April 1939 and subjected to torture and interrogation. He confessed to various crimes, such as spying for foreign powers, plotting against Stalin, sabotaging the economy and the army, and falsifying evidence during the Purge. He also implicated many of his relatives and friends in his confessions. He was tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to death. He was executed by a shot to the back of the head in Lefortovo Prison on 4 February 1940. His body was cremated and his ashes were dumped in a mass grave.