Contents
Copyright © 1998 by Hugo S. Cunningham
first posted 980723
latest minor change 2008/1210
Contents
Biographical entry in "Who's Who"
Some general remarks: Ezhov's significance
Revisionists vs. anti-Soviets
This head-shot of N.I. Yezhov was taken from a portrait in "Bol'shevistskaya Pechat'", 1937, Issue #7, p. 1. It commemorated N.I. Yezhov's award of the Order of Lenin, 17 July 1937. For the full portrait and the official citation, see "y-order.html."
[Note-- the spellings "Yezhov" and "Ezhov" are interchangeable, reflecting different transcription systems.]
Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov
1895-1939
Head of State Security, 1936-38
Bolshevik from April 1917. In the [Russian] Civil War, was a political commissar in the Red Army, later held same post in a province. Member of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1934. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs [Russian initials-- NKVD] in 1936 after the arrest and fall of Yagoda. Chairman of the Commission of Party Control and member of the Politburo, 1937. Removed from his post in the NKVD, Dec. 1938, and named People's Commissar of Water Transport. Arrested and disappeared in March 1939. Executed shortly after arrest.
A complete nonentity, whose name, during the brief period of his administration, evoked horror throughout the entire country and entered history in the word "Ezhovshchina" [a curiously bland term, perhaps "the Yezhov thing" --HSC]. He was raised to power by Stalin for the specific purpose of setting up a bloodbath. In the Soviet press, he was called the "Iron Commissar," but among the people he was named the "bloody dwarf." [Ezhov was only 154 cm tall, about 5'1". Two other famous Russians of comparably short height were Nikita Khrushchev and Alexander Pushkin --HSC] According to those who knew him well, toward the end of his administration, he was totally dependent on narcotics.
Even in comparison with his predecessor Yagoda, who, as they say, "shot [people] with his own hands and enjoyed the spectacle," and his successor Beriya, who shot him, Ezhov distinguished himself as a bloody hangman, one of the most repulsive figures of the Stalin era. At the 20th Congress of the Party in October 1956, Khrushchov called him a "criminal" and "drug addict, deserving punishment." The shocking crimes of Ezhov were fully investigated after 1987.
---- end of article in "Who's Who" ---
The body count during the Great Purge was less than for Collectivization (1929-33), but it was more traumatic for Soviet urban and professional classes, many of whom had been largely unaware of the peasant holocaust in "collectivized" Ukrainian villages.
Yezhov's exceptionally bad reputation was at least partly due to people's reluctance to blame Stalin (whether from fear of denunciation, or from genuine reverence). As Stalin's own criminal record and sociopathic personality have been increasingly revealed in recent years, however, it becomes clear that Yezhov was merely his agent (though only a sadistic degenerate -- or, in Yezhov's own case, a pliable moral cipher -- would have qualified for the job).
In 2008 appeared
J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov
(with the assistance of Nadezhda V. Muraveva)
Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin's "Iron Fist"
Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2008;
cloth, 283 pp.
Getty and Naumov accept Jansen and Petrov's account of Yezhov's incumbency as NKVD chief during the Great Purge (1936-1938); as promised in their subtitle, they concentrate on his rise through the Party ranks 1917-1936.
In Russian, we have seen the following two books:
Aleksej Ivanovich Polyanskij, Ezhov: istoriya «zheleznogo» stalinskogo narkoma [Yezhov: a History of the "Iron" Stalinist Commissar], Veche/Osobyj Arxiv, Moskva, 2001.
Cloth, 400 pp. Includes 16 pp. of photos.
J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning editors, Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, 1993. [Getty & Manning]
David King, The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia, Metropolitan Books, 1997 [King].
Some excellent photos of N.I. Ezhov, as well as the Greatest Genius of All Times and Peoples, and the "enemies of the people" they eliminated together.
V.A. Kovalev, Dva Stalinskix Narkoma ("Two Stalinist Commissars"), Izdatel'skaya Gruppa "Progress," Moscow, 1995. [Kovalev]
A dual biography of OGPU-NKVD chiefs Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda (1934-36) and N.I. Ezhov (1936-38), it lacks much detail about Ezhov's personal life.
Nadezhda Mandelshtam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (translated from the Russian by Max Hayward), Atheneum, New York, 1970; pp. 322-325 [Mandelstam]
Mandelstam describes the last four years of her husband, poet Osip Mandelstam, before his arrest (1938) and death. She says little on Yezhov, apart from an interesting meeting in 1930.
Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (Revised and expanded edition edited and translated by George Shriver), Columbia University Press, New York, 1989; pp. 358-361. [Medvedev]
Though not officially approved, Medvedev was allowed to conduct research in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s, gathering statements from many people (including senior party officials) who would no longer be around in the "Glasnost'" 1990s.
Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin (translated by H.T. Willets), Doubleday (Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.), 1540 Broadway New York NY 10036, 1996; pp. 430-432. [Radzinsky]
Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin; 1937: Stalin's
Year of Terror; Mehring Books Inc., 25900 Greenfield Road, Oak Park MI 48237; 1998. [Rogovin]
Rogovin is an unrepentant follower of L.D. Trotsky, lawfully-convicted (in absentia) arch-agent of fascism, poisoner and murderer of Soviet workers, repeatedly condemned by 99.97% of all eligible Soviet voters. Like Trotsky before him, Rogovin pretends to sympathize with the Socialist revolution in Russia, even denouncing the anti-Soviet propaganda of Conquest et al., but that is nothing more than a sham to divide the working-class movement. Concerned internationalists should write to the capitalists of Mehring Books Inc to express their indignation at the forum provided to this hyena.
Tsitriniak, Grigorii. "Yezhov’s Execution." Russian Law and Politics, Winter 1992-3, 31:46.
Russian text © 1992 by "Literaturnaia Gazeta." "Rasstrel'noe delo Ezhova: Shtrikhi k portretu palacha," "Literaturnaia Gazeta," 1992, no. 7 (February 12), p.15.
Tragically, the provocateur and British spy L.P. Beriya contrived to alienate the trust of the Great Leader and Teacher for Nikolai Ivanovich. This article, though written from an ideologically deficient point of view, nevertheless is one of the best sources currently available of original documents. [Having gotten Nikolai Ivanovich out of the way, Beriya would later poison the Brilliant Genius of Humanity and laugh over His deathbed.]
Victor A. Kravchenko (with Eugene Lyons), I Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official, Garden City Publishing Co (Charles Scribners Sons), Garden City NY, 1946 (Reprinted in 1988, it is currently available from Transaction Publishers). [Kravchenko]
Excellent first-hand account of Collectivization (pp. 91-131) by a low-ranking official, and of Stalinist purges (pp. 132-147, 206-277) by a low-to-mid-ranking target.
The pro-Stalin Left denounced and threatened defector Kravchenko when this book came out in 1946, but every major point in dispute would later be shown to be true.
Drafted into the Russian Army during World War I, Yezhov deserted after the "February" 1917 revolution and went to revolutionary Peterburg. He joined the Bolsheviks in May 1917, supported the Communist "October" revolution, and joined the Red Army in early 1918. As his supervisors praised "his discipline and his diligence in fulfilling orders," he rose in rank as a military commissar (political supervisor of professional officers). [Starkov, p. 21]
Contradictory views of Yezhov's early years and character are offered by Conquest ["Terror"] and Medvedev:
Robert Conquest quotes an "old Bolshevik": "'In the whole of my long life I have never seen a more repellent personality than Yezhov's.' [The 'old Bolshevik'] was reminded of one of those slum children whose favorite occupation was to tie paraffin-soaked paper to a cat's tail and set fire to it-- and this was long before Yezhov had shown his full potential." ["Terror," p. 14]
In contrast, Medvedev claims the younger Yezhov "was not distinguished by negative traits such as treachery and viciousness ... People who knew Yezhov in Komsomol work, in party work, in an oblast of Kazakhstan, or during his short term as people's commissar of agriculture have told me that Yezhov was a very ordinary person at that time, not cruel in any way -- not a bad sort at all." [Medvedev, p. 359] Nadezhda Mandelstam was favorably impressed with Yezhov's modesty and friendliness in 1930 [Mandelstam, pp. 322-325]. It was not until Yezhov met Stalin, apparently during Stalin's trip to Siberia in 1928, that Yezhov fell completely under Stalin's spell, and became willing to commit any crimes Stalin wanted. [Medvedev, p. 359] Leaving the army (1921?) and switching to Party work, he diligently supported Stalin through the 1920s into the 1930s. "Cruelty and refusal to compromise in carrying out the general line, the unreasoning implementation of the orders of the leader, comprised [Ezhov's] workstyle." [Starkov, p. 22]
Starting in 1933, he was drawn into Stalin's purges, first as a Central Committee administrator, but gradually working more with the secret police (OGPU, later NKVD). [Starkov, pp. 22-23]
"In 1935, ... [Ezhov] began work on a large 'theoretical work' under the title 'From Factionalism to Open Counterrevolution.' In it he formulated basic theses/accusations abou the likes and terrorist inclinations of the leaders of the right and Trotsky-Zinovievist oppositions." [Starkov, p. 24] The manuscript was never published, but it still exists in Russian archives.
"The NKVD of the Kirghizian SSR ... announced a socialist competition. In an NKVD order concerning the results of competition between departments, it was stated that
In the summer of 1938, Ezhov overreached himself, showing disrespect for Stalin's closest associates. For example, in response to a question from V.M. Molotov, Chairman of the Sovnarkom ("Council of People's Commissars"), Ezhov answered,
In 1937 Ezhov lived modestly, in a modest Kremlin apartment with his mother and adopted five-year-old daughter. His wife, an actress in the Odessa theatre, either killed herself in 1938 [Starkov, p. 35], or was poisoned by N.I. Ezhov. He had come to suspect her, like just about everyone else, of being a traitor. [Radzinsky, p. 431].
Supposedly in the KGB archives, there remains "Case File 510," about the deceased N.I. Yezhov. It includes flattering letters he had (before his downfall) received from high officials, including "hymns to the 'hero Yezhov' written by the Kazakh poet Dzhambul." [Radzinsky, pp. 430-32]
After Ezhov's death, his daughter was sent to a special orphanage for "enemies of the people" and was exiled to Magadan when she reached adulthood [Starkov, p. 39].
Return to N.I. Yezhov's Home Page