The Rise and Fall of Comrade Yezhov,Being a part of Stalin’s regime was a lot like being a gangster

The Rise and Fall of Comrade Yezhov,Being a part of Stalin’s regime was a lot like being a gangster in the mafia. One day, you could be counted among the most powerful men in the Soviet Union, the next you could be sleeping with the fishes. The precarious nature of serving as a Soviet high official is best illustrated by the life and death of Nikolai Yezhov, who at one point was the most powerful and feared man in the USSR during the late 1930’s.Stalin was a very paranoid man, believing that there were spies, traitors, counterrevolutionaries, and assasins everywhere. No one was safe from his wrath, not even celebrated military heros, veteran Bolshevik politicians, and even trusted friends. In 1936 Stalin began what would later be called “The Great Purge”, a campaign to clense the Soviet Union of all of Stalin’s percieved enemies. To head the program Stalin appointed Nikolai Yezhov as head of the NKVD, which was at the time the Soviet Union’s secret police and intelligence agency, forerunner of the KGB. Yezhov had been a Red Army veteran who fought during the Russian Civil War, and during the 1920’s and 30’s he had risen in the ranks of Soviet government considerably. Stalin entrusted Yezhov with the task of carrying out his purges, and to start Yezhov’s first task was the elimination of his predecessor and mentor, former NKVD head Genrikh Yagoda. Yezhov personally tortured Yagoda, forcing him to sign a confession to various crimes against the state. Yagoda was found guilty by a show trial, then summarily shot.Over the next three years, Yezhov conducted Stalin’s Great Purge with ruthless zeal. In 1937 – 1938 alone, 1.4 million people were arrested by the NKVD, almost 700,000 of whom were executed. Another 700,000 were sent to the gulags (forced labor camps) which for many was a death sentence in itself. Yezhov had little mercy for his victims. When Stalin started dictating quotas of arrests and executions, Yezhov arrested innocent people to fill them. Yezhov once stated,“There will be some innocent victims in this fight against Fascist agents. We are launching a major attack on the Enemy; let there be no resentment if we bump someone with an elbow. Better that ten innocent people should suffer than one spy get away. When you chop wood, chips fly.”Among Yezhov’s most famous victims was Field Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a war hero during the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War, and the man responsible for the modernization the Soviet Military. Tukhachevsky was arrested and accused of being an enemy spy, forced to sign a confession, then executed. On the confession which Tukhachevsky signed were spatters of blood, a result of NKVD torture.Another famous victim was the politician Nikolai Bukharin, who was a critic of Stalin’s collectivization policies. The NKVD didn’t torture Bukharin, but threatened to do so to his family.  At his trial, Bukharin withdrew his confession and pleaded “not guilty”.  The next day he changed his plea to “guilty”, him arm was in a sling after being dislocated.As the Great Purge wound down, it would be Yezhov who would be found under Stalin’s eye of suspicion. Yezhov had become a very powerful man, perhaps even someone who could usurp Stalin’s authority. Yezhov also knew too much and thus was a possible liability to Stalin’s regime. In the summer of 1938 it had become apparent to Yezhov that he was next on Stalin’s hit list when Stalin reassigned many of his allies in the NKVD, then appointed Lavrenty Beria as his deputy. Stalin was secretly grooming Beria to replace Yezhov. On April 10th, 1939 Yezhov was secretly arrested, tortured, and forced to confess to a wide variety of crimes including sabotage, embezzlement, spying for the Germans, and homosexuality. He was convicted in a show trial, and had to be dragged from the courtroom by guards while frantically screaming and wailing. In an ironic twist, Yezhov was shot in a secret execution chamber which he himself had designed and ordered the construction of. His body was cremated and dumped in a common mass grave. After his execution, he was wiped out of existence from Soviet history. His name was erased from records, removed from books, and his image was even removed from photographs, as pictured above. -- source link

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