People's Commissar Yezhov. Sex life of the executioner
Saint Petersburg
VKVS building, Moscow
2) Evgenia Solomonovna Gladun-Khayutina
adopted daughter: Natalia
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov(April 19 (May 1) - February 4) - Soviet statesman and political figure, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR (-), General Commissioner of State Security (). The year during which Yezhov was in office became a symbolic symbol of repression; this period itself very soon began to be called the Yezhovshchina. Due to his short stature (151 cm), he was popularly nicknamed the “Bloody Dwarf”.
Childhood and youth
In his profiles and autobiographies, Yezhov claimed that he was born in 1895 in St. Petersburg into the family of a foundry worker. At the time of the birth of Nikolai Yezhov, the family, apparently, lived in the village of Veivery, Mariampolsky district (now Lithuania) of the Suwalki province (the city of Suwalki is now part of Poland), and three years later, when his father Ivan Yezhov, born in the Tula province, received promotion and was appointed zemstvo guard of the Mariampol city district, - moved to Mariampol. His mother, Anna Antonovna, was Lithuanian.
In 1906, Nikolai Yezhov went to St. Petersburg to apprentice with a tailor, a relative. The father drank himself to death and died, nothing is known about the mother. As a child, according to some sources, he lived in an orphanage. In 1917 he joined the Bolshevik Party.
Start of a career
Data on Yezhov’s activities in the field of intelligence and counterintelligence proper are ambiguous. According to many intelligence veterans, Yezhov was absolutely incompetent in these matters and devoted all his energy to identifying internal “enemies of the people.” On the other hand, under him, the NKVD authorities kidnapped General E.K. Miller () in Paris and carried out a number of operations against Japan; a number of murders of persons disliked by Stalin were organized abroad.
Yezhov was considered one of the main “leaders”; his portraits were published in newspapers and were present at rallies. Boris Efimov’s poster “Hedge Gauntlets” became widely known, in which the People’s Commissar takes hedgehog gloves a multi-headed snake symbolizing the Trotskyists and Bukharinites. “The Ballad of People’s Commissar Yezhov” was published, signed in the name of the Kazakh akyn Dzhambul Dzhabayev (according to some sources, written by the “translator” Mark Tarlovsky). Constant epithets - “Stalin’s People’s Commissar”, “favorite of the people”.
I remember when I was studying Yezhov’s [rehabilitation] case, I was struck by the style of his written explanations. If I didn’t know that Nikolai Ivanovich had an incomplete lower education behind him, I might have thought that he writes so smoothly, has such a dexterous command of words educated person. The scale of his activities is also striking. After all, it was this nondescript, uneducated man who organized the construction of the White Sea Canal (this “work” was started by his predecessor Yagoda), Northern route, BAM.
Like Yagoda, Yezhov, shortly before his arrest (December 9), was removed from the NKVD to a less important post, which is a sign of his disgrace. Initially, he was appointed part-time People's Commissar of Water Transport (NKVT): this position was related to his previous activities, since the network of canals served as an important means of internal communication for the country, ensuring state security, and was often built by prisoners. After on November 19, 1938, the Politburo discussed a denunciation against Yezhov, filed by the head of the NKVD of the Ivanovo region, Zhuravlev (who was soon moved to the post of head of the NKVD for Moscow and the Moscow region, and on December 31, 1938, was arrested and soon executed), on November 23, Yezhov wrote a resignation letter to the Politburo and personally to Stalin. In the petition, Yezhov took responsibility for the sabotage activities of various “enemies of the people” who inadvertently infiltrated the NKVD and the prosecutor’s office, as well as for the flight of a number of intelligence officers and simply NKVD employees abroad (in 1937, the NKVD plenipotentiary representative for the Far Eastern Territory Lyushkov fled to Japan, in at the same time, an employee of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR, Uspensky, disappeared in an unknown direction, etc.), admitted that he “had a businesslike approach to the placement of personnel,” etc. Anticipating an imminent arrest, Yezhov asked Stalin “not to touch my 70-year-old old mother.” . At the same time, Yezhov summed up his activities as follows: “Despite all these great shortcomings and blunders in my work, I must say that under the daily leadership of the NKVD Central Committee I crushed the enemies great...”
Arrest and death
Sources
- Alexey Pavlyukov Yezhov. Biography. - M.: “Zakharov”, 2007. - 576 p. - ISBN 978-5-8159-0686-0
- N. Petrov, M. Jansen "Stalin's Pet" - Nikolai Yezhov, trans. from English N. Balashov, T. Nikitina - M.: ROSSPEN, Foundation of the First President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin, 2008. 447 p. - (History of Stalinism). ISBN 978-5-8243-0919-5
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People's Commissar Yezhov - biography. NKVD - "Yezhovshchina"
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (born April 19 (May 1), 1895 - February 4, 1940) - Soviet statesman and party leader, head of the Stalinist NKVD, member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, candidate for members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, People's Commissar of Water Transport of the USSR. The era of his leadership of the punitive authorities went down in history under the name “Yezhovshchina.”
Origin. Early years
Nikolai - was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a foundry worker in 1895. His father came from the Tula province (the village of Volokhonshchino near Plavsk), but ended up in military service to Lithuania, married a Lithuanian woman and stayed there. According to the official Soviet biography, N.I. Yezhov was born in St. Petersburg, but, according to archival data, it is more likely that his place of birth was the Suwalki province (on the border of Lithuania and Poland).
He graduated from the 1st grade of primary school, later, in 1927, he attended courses in Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and from the age of 14 he worked as a tailor's apprentice, mechanic, and worker at a bed factory and at the Putilov plant.
Service. Party career
1915 - Yezhov was drafted into the army, and a year later he was fired due to injury. At the end of 1916, he returned to the front, serving in the 3rd reserve infantry regiment and in the 5th artillery workshops of the Northern Front. 1917, May - joined the RSDLP (b) (Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party).
1917, November - Yezhov commands a Red Guard detachment, and in 1918 - 1919 heads the communist club at the Volotin plant. Also in 1919, he joined the Red Army and served as secretary of the party committee of the military subdistrict in Saratov. During the Civil War, Yezhov was a military commissar of several Red Army units.
1921 - Ezhoav is transferred to party work. 1921, July - Nikolai Ivanovich married Marxist Antonina Titova. For his “intransigence” towards the party opposition, he was quickly promoted through the ranks.
1922, March - he holds the position of secretary of the Mari regional committee of the RCP (b), and from October becomes secretary of the Semipalatinsk provincial committee, then head of the department of the Tatar regional committee, secretary of the Kazakh regional committee of the CPSU (b).
Meanwhile, the Basmachi movement arose in Central Asia - a national movement that opposed Soviet power. Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov led the suppression of the Basmachi movement in Kazakhstan.
Transfer to Moscow
1927 - Nikolai Yezhov is transferred to Moscow. During the internal party struggle of the 1920s and 1930s, he always supported Stalin and was now rewarded for this. He rose rather quickly: 1927 - became deputy head of the accounting and distribution department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in 1929 - 1930 - People's Commissar of Agriculture Soviet Union, takes part in collectivization and dispossession. 1930, November - he is the head of the distribution department, the personnel department, and the industrial department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
1934 - Stalin appoints Yezhov chairman of the Central Commission for Cleansing the Party, and in 1935 he becomes secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
In the “Letter of an Old Bolshevik” (1936), written by Boris Nikolaevsky, there is a description of Yezhov as he was in those days:
For all my long life, I have never met such a repulsive person as Yezhov. When I look at him, I remember the nasty boys from Rasteryaeva Street, whose favorite pastime was to tie a piece of paper soaked in kerosene to the tail of a cat, set it on fire, and then watch with delight as the terrified animal rushed down the street, desperately but in vain trying to escape the approaching fire. I have no doubt that Yezhov amused himself in this way as a child, and that he continues to do something similar now.
Yezhov was short (151 cm). Those who knew about his sadistic tendencies called him among themselves the Poisonous Dwarf or the Bloody Dwarf.
"Yezhovshchina"
The turning point in the life of Nikolai Ivanovich was the murder of the communist governor of Leningrad, Kirov. Stalin used this murder as a pretext to intensify political repression, and he made Yezhov their main conductor. Nikolai Ivanovich actually began to head the investigation into the murder of Kirov and helped to fabricate charges of involvement in it by former leaders of the party opposition - Kamenev, Zinoviev and others. The Bloody Dwarf was present at the execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev and he kept the bullets with which they were shot as souvenirs.
When Yezhov was able to brilliantly cope with this task, Stalin elevated him even more.
1936, September 26 - after the removal of Genrikh Grigorievich Yagoda from his post, Yezhov becomes head of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) and a member of the Central Committee. Such an appointment, at first glance, could not imply an increase in terror: unlike Yagoda, Yezhov was not closely connected with the “authorities.” Yagoda fell out of favor because he was slow in repressing the old Bolsheviks, whom the leader wanted to strengthen. But for Yezhov, who had only recently risen, the defeat of the old Bolshevik cadres and the destruction of Yagoda himself - potential or imaginary enemies of Stalin - did not present any personal difficulties. Nikolai Ivanovich was personally devoted to the Leader of the People, and not to Bolshevism and not to the NKVD. It was just such a candidate that Stalin needed at that time.
At the direction of Stalin, the new People's Commissar carried out a purge of Yagoda's henchmen - almost all of them were arrested and shot. During the years when Yezhov headed the NKVD (1936-1938), Stalin's Great Purge reached its climax. 50-75% of members of the Supreme Council and officers Soviet army were removed from their posts, ended up in prisons, Gulag camps, or were executed. “Enemies of the people,” suspected of counter-revolutionary activities, and people simply “inconvenient” for the leader were mercilessly destroyed. In order to impose a death sentence, the corresponding record of the investigator was sufficient.
As a result of the purges, people who had considerable work experience were shot or put in camps - those who could at least slightly normalize the situation in the state. For example, repressions among the military were very painful during the Great Patriotic War: among the high military command there were almost no people left who had practical experience in organizing and conducting combat operations.
Under the tireless leadership of N.I. Yezhov, many cases were fabricated, the largest falsified show political trials were held.
Many ordinary Soviet citizens were accused (usually based on flimsy and non-existent “evidence”) of treason or “sabotage.” The “troika” who passed sentences on the ground followed the arbitrary numbers of executions and imprisonments that were handed down from above by Stalin and Yezhov. The People's Commissar knew that most of the accusations against his victims were false, but human life had no value for him. The Bloody Dwarf spoke openly:
In this fight against fascist agents there will be innocent victims. We are waging a major offensive against the enemy, and let them not be offended if we hit someone with our elbow. It is better to let dozens of innocents suffer than to miss one spy. The forest is being cut down and the chips are flying.
Arrest
Yezhov faced the same fate as his predecessor Yagoda. 1939 - he was arrested following a denunciation by the head of the NKVD department for the Ivanovo region V.P. Zhuravleva. The charges against him included preparing terrorist attacks against Stalin and homosexuality. Fearing torture, during interrogation the former People's Commissar pleaded guilty to all counts.
1940, February 2 - the former People's Commissar was tried in a closed session by the Military Board chaired by Vasily Ulrich. Yezhov, like his predecessor, Yagoda, swore his love for Stalin to the end. He denied being a spy, terrorist or conspirator, saying he "preferred death to lies." He began to claim that his previous confessions were extracted by torture (“they used severe beatings on me”). He admitted that his only mistake was that he did not “cleanse” the state security agencies enough of “enemies of the people”:
I cleared out 14 thousand security officers, but my huge guilt is that I didn’t clear them out enough... I won’t deny that I was drunk, but I worked like an ox... If I wanted to carry out a terrorist act against one of the government members, I would not recruit anyone for this purpose, but, using technology, I would commit this vile deed at any moment.
In conclusion, he said that he would die with the name of Stalin on his lips.
After the court hearing, Yezhov was taken to his cell, and half an hour later he was called again to announce his death sentence. Hearing him, Yezhov went limp and fainted, but the guards managed to catch him and took him out of the room. The request for clemency was rejected, and the Poison Dwarf became hysterical and crying. As he was led out of the room again, he struggled against the guards' hands and screamed.
Execution
1940, February 4 - Yezhov was shot by the future KGB chairman Ivan Serov (according to another version, security officer Blokhin). They were shot in the basement of a small NKVD station in Varsonofevsky Lane (Moscow). This basement had sloping floors to allow blood to drain and wash away. Such floors were made in accordance with the previous instructions of the Bloody Dwarf himself. For the execution of the former People's Commissar, they did not use the main death chamber of the NKVD in the basements of the Lubyanka, to guarantee complete secrecy.
According to the statements of the prominent security officer P. Sudoplatov, when Yezhov was led to execution, he sang “The Internationale”.
Yezhov’s body was immediately cremated, and the ashes were thrown into a common grave at the Moscow Donskoye Cemetery. The shooting was not officially reported. The People's Commissar simply quietly disappeared. Even in the late 1940s, some believed that the former People's Commissar was in a madhouse.
After death
The ruling in the case of Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR (1998) stated that “as a result of the operations that were carried out by NKVD officers in accordance with Yezhov’s orders, more than 1.5 million citizens, about half of them were shot.” The number of Gulag prisoners increased almost threefold during the 2 years of the Yezhovshchina. At least 140 thousand of them (and possibly much more) died over the years from hunger, cold and overwork in the camps or on the way to them.
Having attached the label “Yezhovshchina” to the repressions, propagandists tried to shift the blame for them entirely from Stalin to Yezhov. But, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, the Bloody Dwarf was, rather, a doll, an executor of Stalin’s will, and it simply could not have been any other way.
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (1895-1940). Soviet political and party leader, served as General Commissioner of State Security (1937).
He grew up in the family of a foundry worker. Got what's called "unfinished inferior" primary education. Fluent in Lithuanian and Polish languages. Member since 1913 as part of the 172nd Lida Infantry Regiment with the rank of private. He took part in hostilities and was wounded. Demobilized in 1916, he returned as a worker to the Putilov plant. He was again drafted into the army at the end of 1916 into the 3rd reserve infantry regiment of the Northern Front. Immediately after he joined the party.
Assistant Commissioner since October 1917 In the period from November 1917 to January 1918, he served as commissar of the Vitebsk station, and also in November 1917 commanded a detachment of Red Guards. In 1919 he joined the Red Army and became secretary of the party committee in Saratov. In 1919-1921 he alternately held the positions of political instructor, commissar of the radiotelegraph school, and commissar of the radio base. In February 1922 he was transferred to the Mari Regional Committee of the RCP(b). In October 1922 he was transferred to the position of secretary of the Semipalatinsk provincial committee, later head of the regional committee department, secretary of the regional committee of the Kazakh CPSU(b). Directly under his leadership the suppression of the Basmachi rebellion in Kazakhstan took place.
Since 1927, instructor and then deputy of the accounting and distribution department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. He took an active part in the popularization of collectivization and dispossession. From 1930 he held positions in the distribution department, personnel department, and industrial department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1933, Yezhov received the appointment of chairman of the Central Commission for cleansing the ranks of the party. Head of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and the Party Control Commission since February 1934. From February 1935 to March 1939 he was chairman of the Commission of the so-called party control under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. He took part in the preparation of the execution of L.B. Kameneva, G.E. Zinoviev and other prominent party figures. It is significant that Yezhov later kept the bullets from which they were killed as souvenirs.
09.26.1936 confirmed as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. It was then that one of the most terrible periods in the so-called “Yezhovshchina” period began. By order of Stalin, Yezhov from the end of 1937. unfolds mass repressions, primarily affecting the leading economic, administrative, party and military personnel, as well as against “class aliens”.
The numbers of those repressed during this period look truly terrifying: in 1937, more than 936 thousand people were arrested and illegally convicted (about 353 thousand were shot), and in 1938 - about 630 thousand (more than 320 thousand were shot). Also, more than 1.35 million people were imprisoned in the Gulags. He supervised the purge of the ranks of the army's senior commanders.
But on November 17, 1938, a resolution was issued by the Council of People's Commissars V.M. Molotov and, in which the perversions in the work of the NKVD were noted. Yezhov, writes a letter addressed to Stalin with a request to relieve him of his duties as People's Commissar, which on November 25, 1938. was satisfied. From this period to April 1939. Yezhov is one by one deprived of all party positions. According to the denunciation of the head of the NKVD Department V.P. Zhuravlev in the Ivanovo region 04/10/1939. was arrested. He was accused of preparing a terrorist attack against Stalin and being prone to homosexuality. The verdict was death penalty and execution. Collegium Supreme Court USSR on military affairs in 1988. Yezhov's rehabilitation was denied.
The strength of the Bolshevik Party lies precisely in the fact that it is not afraid of the truth and looks it straight in the eye(Stalin).
Therefore, the truth must be told, no matter how difficult it may be. It is necessary to tell the truth because it is with the truth that we knock the trump cards out of the hands of anti-Sovietists
If in the thirties there was any person comparable in popularity to Stalin, it was Yezhov. Yezhov was in drawings, posters, at demonstrations, sat on presidiums, poems were dedicated to him, letters were written to him.
I will not go into Yezhov's court case. Maybe Yezhov was not a foreign spy. But what is 100% clear is that Yezhov, having stood at the helm of the NKVD, could not control himself, he was corrupted by unlimited power, he became a legal killer, but could no longer understand or realize this. It was he who saw enemies and conspiracies everywhere, it was he who was able to convince everyone else of this, it was he who started the terror.
"... I made a mistake and must be held accountable for it. Without touching on a number of objective facts that, at best, can somehow explain the poor work, I want to dwell only on my personal guilt as the head of the People's Commissariat. Firstly, it is quite obvious that I did not cope with the work of such a responsible People's Commissariat, I did not cover the entire amount of complex intelligence work. My fault is that I did not raise this issue with all the urgency, in a Bolshevik way, before the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Secondly, it is my fault. is that, seeing a number of major shortcomings in the work, moreover, even while criticizing these shortcomings in my People’s Commissariat, I did not at the same time raise these issues before the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Content with individual successes, glossing over shortcomings, floundering alone, he tried to straighten things out. It was difficult to straighten out - then I was nervous. Thirdly, my fault is that I took a purely businesslike approach to the placement of personnel. In many cases, not trusting the employee politically, he delayed the issue of his arrest and waited until someone else was selected. For the same practical reasons, he made mistakes in many employees, recommended them to responsible positions, and they have now been exposed as spies. Fourthly, my fault is that I showed carelessness that was completely unacceptable for a security officer in the matter of decisively clearing the security department of members of the Central Committee and the Politburo. In particular, this carelessness is unforgivable in the matter of delaying the arrest of the Kremlin conspirators (Bryukhanov and others). Fifthly, my fault is that, doubting the political honesty of such people as the former head of the NKVD DVK traitor Lyushkov and lately The People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, Chairman Uspensky, did not take sufficient measures of the KGB precautions and thereby gave the opportunity to Lyushkov to hide in Japan and Uspensky, who is still being searched for, is still unknown. All this taken together makes it completely impossible for me to continue working in the NKVD. Once again I ask you to release me from work in the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Despite all these great shortcomings and blunders in my work, I must say that under the daily leadership of the Central Committee of the NKVD, I crushed my enemies great." (from a note by N.I. Ezhov to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on November 23, 1938)
Yezhov had to be stopped. And the wines of the Central Committee of 1937-38. the fact that the Central Committee did not immediately figure out what kind of monster Yezhov had turned into.
With the help of L.P. Beria managed to stop the terror of the presumptuous Yezhov. In 1939, the cases of many convicts were reviewed. Three hundred thousand people were rehabilitated.
“When I arrived at the NKVD, I was initially alone. I didn’t have an assistant. At first I looked closely at the job, and then began my work with the defeat of Polish spies who got into all departments of the Cheka. Soviet intelligence was in their hands. Thus , I, a “Polish spy,” began my work with the defeat of Polish spies. After the defeat of Polish espionage, I immediately set about cleaning up the contingent of defectors. That’s how I began my work in the NKVD. I personally exposed Molchanov, and with him the others. enemies of the people who infiltrated the NKVD and occupied responsible positions.I had in mind to arrest Lyushkov, but I missed him, and he fled abroad." February 3, 1940)
“For twenty-five years of my party life I honestly fought with enemies and destroyed enemies. I also have crimes for which I can be shot.” (N. I. Yezhov’s last word at the trial on February 3, 1940)
“During a search in the desk in Yezhov’s office, in one of the drawers I found an unclosed package with the form “NKVD Secretariat” addressed to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to N.I. Yezhov, the package contained four bullets (three from cartridges for a pistol “ Nagan" and one, apparently, for a Colt revolver).
The bullets are flattened after being fired. Each bullet was wrapped in a piece of paper with a pencil inscription on each “Zinoviev”, “Kamenev”, “Smirnov” (and there were two bullets in the piece of paper with the inscription “Smirnov”). Apparently, these bullets were sent to Yezhov after the execution of the sentence over Zinoviev, Kamenev and others. I have seized the indicated package."
(From the report of State Security Captain Shchepilov on April 11, 1939)
“I cleaned up 14,000 security officers. But my fault is that I didn’t clean them up enough. I had such a situation. I gave the task to one or another department head to interrogate the arrested person and at the same time I thought: you’re interrogating him today, and tomorrow I will arrest you. I was surrounded by enemies of the people, my enemies. I purged the security officers everywhere. I did not purify them only in Moscow, Leningrad and the North Caucasus. I considered them honest, but in reality it turned out that I was under my wing. sheltered saboteurs, saboteurs, spies and other types of enemies of the people."
(N. I. Ezhov’s last word at the trial February 3, 1940)
Even on his last day, Yezhov could not realize the horror of which he was the father.
(1895-1939) Soviet statesman, People's Commissar of the NKVD
The name of Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov is associated with one of the most difficult periods in the history of the 20th century - the years Stalin's terror. He was one of the organizers and its main performer. In those years, Yezhov was called the “iron commissar.”
Nikolai was born in St. Petersburg into a working-class family. At the age of fourteen he began working at a factory. During the First World War he was drafted into the army, but did not stay at the front for long, since the February Revolution took place. At this time he joined the Bolshevik Party.
During civil war, Nikolai Yezhov was a political commissar in the Red Army, then worked in the provinces, where he established himself as an executive and highly organized employee.
Since 1927, Nikolai Yezhov worked in Moscow in the secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. He organized a party personnel department, where all appointments and movements within the party hierarchy were recorded. It was in this position that Yezhov attracted the attention of Joseph Stalin.
After I. Tovstukha left the post of Stalin’s personal secretary, Yezhov became the chief assistant to the General Secretary of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on personnel issues, and in 1936, after the arrest and fall of Genrikh Yagoda, he was appointed People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs. This characteristic incident testifies to his work. One day Nikolai Yezhov gave Stalin a list of people who were “being checked for arrest.” Stalin imposed a resolution: “It is necessary not to check, but to arrest.”
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov turned out to be a capable student. The wave of arrests began to grow rapidly. In January 1937, the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs received military rank General Commissioner of State Security and was introduced to the Politburo. However, at the same time, Stalin began to prepare for Yezhov’s removal. He did not like people who knew a lot and actively interfered in his activities.
Unlike his predecessors, Nikolai Yezhov was removed in two stages. Initially, he was appointed to the post of People's Commissar of Water Transport. And on December 8, 1938, he was relieved of his post as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs and soon disappeared without a trace.
Nothing was reported about this in the press, only the city of Yezhovo-Cherkessk was again renamed Cherkessk. Soon, the party organizations received a secret letter from the Central Committee, which ordered to answer questions about Yezhov that he had become an alcoholic, had lost his mind and was in prison. psychiatric hospital. Such were the customs of that time. Stalin assumed that such an explanation was supposed to serve as an indirect explanation for the “excesses in the arrests of 1937-1938” and to avert suspicion of direct organization of repressions.
It is characteristic that, speaking to voters in 1936, Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov proudly told the audience: “I am trying to honestly carry out the tasks that the party has entrusted to me. It is easy, honorable and pleasant for a Bolshevik to carry out these tasks.”
Many years later it turned out that he spent more than a year and a half in prison and was shot on February 4, 1940. During one of the interrogations, Nikolai Yezhov told his successor Lavrentiy Beria: “I understand everything. My turn has come."
In his report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev called him a bloodier criminal than Yagoda and Beria.
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