31 Facts About Nikolai Yezhov

Nikolai Yezhov was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge.

Nikolai Yezhov was born either in Saint Petersburg, according to his official Soviet biography, or in southwest Lithuania.

Nikolai Yezhov worked as a musician, railroad switchman, forest warden, head of a brothel, and as a housepainting contractor employing a couple of hired workers.

From 1915 until 1917, Nikolai Yezhov served in the Imperial Russian Army.

Nikolai Yezhov joined the Bolsheviks on 5 May 1917, in Vitebsk, six months before the October Revolution.

Stalin used the murder as a pretext for further purges, and he personally chose Nikolai Yezhov to carry out the task.

Nikolai Yezhov oversaw falsified accusations in the Kirov murder case against opposition leaders Kamenev, Zinoviev, and their supporters.

Nikolai Yezhov was appointed People's Commissar for Internal Affairs and a member of the Central Committee on 26 September 1936, following the dismissal of Genrikh Yagoda.

Nikolai Yezhov ordered the NKVD to sprinkle mercury on the curtains of his office so that the physical evidence could be collected and used to support the charge that Yagoda was a German spy, sent to assassinate Nikolai Yezhov and Stalin with poison and restore capitalism.

Nikolai Yezhov later admitted under interrogation on 5 May 1939 that he had fabricated the mercury poisoning to "raise his authority in the eyes of the leadership of the country".

Nikolai Yezhov conducted a thorough purge of the security organs, both NKVD and GRU, removing and executing not only many officials who had been appointed by his predecessors Yagoda and Menzhinsky, but even his own appointees as well.

Nikolai Yezhov admitted that some innocent people were being falsely accused, but he dismissed their lives as being unimportant so long as the purge was successful:.

The Gulag population swelled by 685,201 under Nikolai Yezhov, nearly tripling in size in just two years, with at least 140,000 of these prisoners dying of malnutrition, exhaustion and the elements in the camps.

Nikolai Yezhov was appointed People's Commissar for Water Transport on 6 April 1938.

The defection to Japan of the Far Eastern NKVD chief, Genrikh Lyushkov, on 13 June 1938, rightly worried Nikolai Yezhov, who had earlier protected Lyushkov from the purges and now feared that he would be blamed for disloyalty.

Nikolai Yezhov eventually fell in the struggle for power, and Beria became the new NKVD chief.

Well acquainted with typical Stalinist bureaucratic precursors to eventual dismissal and arrest, Nikolai Yezhov recognized Beria's increasing influence with Stalin as a sign that his downfall was imminent, and he plunged headlong into alcoholism and despair.

Stalin suspected that Nikolai Yezhov was involved in the disappearance and told Beria, not Nikolai Yezhov, that Uspensky must be caught.

Nikolai Yezhov was particularly vulnerable because of her many lovers, and for months people close to her were being arrested.

Nikolai Yezhov attended his last Politburo meeting on 29 January 1939.

On 3 March 1939, Nikolai Yezhov was relieved of all his posts in the Central Committee but retained his post as People's Commissar of Water Transportation.

On 2 February 1940, Nikolai Yezhov was tried behind closed doors by the Military Collegium, chaired by Soviet judge Vasiliy Ulrikh.

Nikolai Yezhov denied being a spy, a terrorist, or a conspirator, stating that he preferred "death to telling lies".

Nikolai Yezhov maintained that his previous confession had been obtained under torture, admitted that he had purged 14,000 of his fellow Chekists, but said that he was surrounded by "enemies of the people".

On hearing the verdict, Nikolai Yezhov became faint and began to collapse, but the guards caught him and removed him from the room.

An immediate appeal for clemency was denied, and Nikolai Yezhov became hysterical and wept.

Nikolai Yezhov soon had to be dragged out of the room, struggling with the guards and screaming.

Nikolai Yezhov's body was immediately cremated, and his ashes dumped in a common grave at Moscow's Donskoye Cemetery.

Nikolai Yezhov married Antonina Titova, a minor Communist Party clerk, in 1917, but he later divorced her and married Yevgenia Feigenberg, a Soviet publishing worker and Chief Editor of USSR in Construction magazine who was known for her friendship with many Soviet writers and actors.

When Nikolai Yezhov was arrested in 1939, he stated during his interrogation that he had many lovers, including Filipp Goloshchyokin, then party functionary in Kazakh ASSR, during the latter half of 1925, and that they had shared an apartment in Kyzylorda.

In Russia, Nikolai Yezhov remains mostly known as the person who was responsible for atrocities of the Great Purge that he conducted on Stalin's orders.