People's Commissar Yezhov Nikolay Ivanovich. Yezhov
In Soviet historiography, starting from the 1960s, the "great terror" of 1937-1938 was invariably associated with the name Lavrenty Beria. However, "a man in an ominously gleaming pince-nez", for all his sins, does not deserve such an honor. The name of Beria was firmly tied to the "great terror" Nikita Khrushchev. Having won the struggle for power from the former all-powerful head of the NKVD, Khrushchev did not limit himself to the physical elimination of a competitor, but also contributed to the creation of a completely demonic historical portrait defeated enemy.
Thanks to this, the man who really was the main executor of the "great terror" remained in the shadows - Nikolai Yezhov.
This person is one of the most famous and at the same time mysterious of high-ranking people. Soviet era. This is largely due to the fact that Yezhov himself in his questionnaires cited data, sometimes very far from reality.
From clerk to commissioner
He was born on May 1, 1895 in St. Petersburg in the family of a Russian foundry worker. According to another version, the place of his birth was the village of Veivery, Mariampolsky district, Suvalsk province (the territory of modern Lithuania). His father, according to this version, was a retired soldier from the Tula province, and his mother was a Lithuanian peasant woman. In St. Petersburg, he appeared in 1906, when the parents sent the boy to a relative to learn tailoring.
In 1915, Yezhov volunteered for the front, but did not win military laurels - he was slightly wounded, fell ill, and then was completely declared unfit for military service due to his very small stature (151 cm). Before the revolution, Yezhov served as a clerk in the rear artillery workshop.
In the questionnaires, Yezhov wrote that he had joined the Bolshevik Party in the spring of 1917, but in the Vitebsk archives there was information that in August 1917 he joined the local organization of the RSDLP, which consisted not only of the Bolsheviks, but also of the Menshevik internationalists.
Be that as it may, in October revolution Yezhov did not take part in subsequent events - after another illness, he received a long vacation and went to his parents, who had moved to the Tver province. In 1918 he took a job at Glass factory in Vyshny Volochek.
Yezhov was drafted into the Red Army in 1919 and sent to the Saratov base of radio formations, where he served first as a private, and then as a scribe under the commissar of the base. In April 1921, Yezhov became the commissar of the base and began to move up the party line.
Vyacheslav Molotov (left), Georgy Ordzhonikidze (second from left), Nikolai Yezhov (second from right) and Anastas Mikoyan (right) in the presidium at a solemn meeting dedicated to the launch of the first stage of the Moscow Metro. 1935 Photo: RIA Novosti
"He can't stop"
Marriage helped his career. Married in July 1921 to Antonina Titova, who was transferred to work in Moscow, Yezhov, following his wife, ended up in the capital.
A short, but diligent and diligent person, he showed himself well in the capital, and he began to be sent to work in high party posts in the district committees and regional committees of the CPSU (b). Having traveled around Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, during the XIV Congress of the Party, Yezhov met high-ranking official of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) Ivan Moskvin. The party apparatchik drew attention to the executive officer and in 1927, being the head of the Orgraspreddepartment of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, invited Yezhov to the post of instructor.
“I do not know a more ideal worker than Yezhov. Or rather, not an employee, but a performer. Having entrusted him with something, you can not check and be sure that he will do everything. Yezhov has only one, however, a significant drawback: he does not know how to stop. Sometimes there are situations when it is impossible to do something, you have to stop. Yezhov does not stop. And sometimes you have to follow him in order to stop him in time ... ”Ivan Moskvin later wrote about his protégé. This is perhaps the most accurate and exhaustive characterization of Yezhov.
Ivan Mikhailovich Moskvin will be shot on November 27, 1937, when People's Commissar Yezhov will spin the flywheel of the "Great Terror" with might and main.
The cleaning specialist
The executive continued career. In 1930, when Moskvin went on promotion, Yezhov headed the Orgraspredotdel of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and met with Joseph Stalin, who quickly appreciated the business qualities of the apparatchik.
From left to right - Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov on the Moscow-Volga Canal. Photo: www.russianlook.com
Yezhov diligently pursued the Stalinist personnel course. In 1933-1934, he was included in the Central Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for the “purge” of the party. In February 1935, he became chairman of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. This structure was engaged in checking the activities of party members, determining whether their moral character the high rank of a communist. Yezhov receives the authority to decide the party fate of the old Bolsheviks, opponents of the Stalinist course.
The internal party confrontation at this point is rapidly approaching the final phase. The revolutionaries who went through the Civil War were accustomed to relying in the struggle not on the power of words, but on the "rightness of the weapon."
Nikolai Yezhov in 1937. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
The first high-profile trials of party oppositionists, organized by the chief of the NKVD Heinrich Yagoda, supporters of the Stalinist general line are no longer satisfied - too slowly and selectively. The issue must be resolved quickly and fundamentally.
After the process of Kamenev And Zinoviev in August 1936, Stalin decides that the head of the NKVD at this stage needs an excellent performer who can cope with a massive task.
On September 26, 1936, Nikolai Yezhov became People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. His predecessor, Genrikh Yagoda, is accused of "anti-state crimes", and at the so-called Third Moscow Trial, he will be in the dock.
Heinrich Yagoda was sentenced to death and shot in the Lubyanka prison on March 15, 1938.
Repressions began with the Chekists
Yezhov began his activities as head of the NKVD with a "cleansing" in the ranks of his subordinates. On March 2, 1937, in a report at the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he sharply criticized his subordinates, pointing out failures in intelligence and investigative work. The plenum approved the report and instructed Yezhov to restore order in the organs of the NKVD. Of the state security officers, from October 1, 1936 to August 15, 1938, 2,273 people were arrested. Yezhov himself later said that 14,000 Chekists were “purged”.
The wheel of the Great Terror has begun to turn. Initially, party organs pointed to the "enemies", and the NKVD carried out only the mission of executors. Soon, Yezhov and his subordinates began to take the initiative, themselves identifying "counter-revolutionary elements" that were out of the party's field of vision.
On July 30, 1937, People's Commissar Yezhov signed the order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 00447 approved by the Politburo "On the operation to repress former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements", which provides for the creation of "operational troikas" of the NKVD for the accelerated consideration of cases.
It was with this order that what is now known as the Great Terror began. In 1937-1938 according to political motives 1,344,923 people were convicted, of which 681,692 were sentenced to capital punishment.
Nothing like this National history dont know. At the first stage, party and government officials who did not share the Stalinist line fell into the millstones of terror; In subsequent stages, the "great terror" turned into a way to advance along career ladder and settling personal accounts, when denunciations began to be written against neighbors, work colleagues, and individuals who were simply objectionable for one reason or another.
"I glorify batyr Yezhov"
Soviet propaganda, which glorified the valiant workers of the NKVD, "who saved the country from the 'fascist Trotskyists'", created an atmosphere of hysteria in society.
Yezhov worked tirelessly. From January 1937 to August 1938, he sent Stalin about 15,000 special messages with reports on arrests, punitive operations, requests for authorization of certain repressive actions, with interrogation protocols.
More often than him during this period, only Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov - head of the Soviet government.
The Soviet press praised Yezhov and his "hedgehogs" with which he crushed "counter-revolutionary bastards." In terms of popularity in the country, this man of one and a half meters tall was second only to the leader himself.
Kazakh akyn Dzhambul Dzhabaev composed the "Song of Batyr Yezhov", in which there were the following lines:
"I praise the hero who sees and hears,
As, crawling towards us in the dark, the enemy breathes.
I praise the courage and strength of a hero
With the eyes of an eagle and an iron hand.
I glorify batyr Yezhov, who,
Having opened, destroyed the snake holes,
And where disturbing lightnings fly,
He stood as a sentry on the Soviet border.
By the summer of 1938, many in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks remembered the words of the unfortunate Ivan Moskvin: "Yezhov does not know how to stop." There was no longer any talk of any “socialist legality”: from all sides there were signals that the NKVD officers were using torture, fabricating cases against people who had nothing to do with the counter-revolution at all.
Yezhov, on the other hand, not only does not stop employees, but encourages them to act even harder and more actively. Moreover, they said that the head of the NKVD was personally involved in the interrogation and torture of those arrested.
Moor did his job...
Yezhov crossed all possible boundaries. The performer felt like the arbiter human destinies. Even the people closest to Stalin were frankly afraid of him. It seemed that a little more, and the NKVD would push the party away from the levers of power.
Stalin himself later told his comrades-in-arms that, having called Yezhov somehow, he discovered that the head of the NKVD was drunk to smithereens. Perhaps Iosif Vissarionovich invented this story, but the fact is that Yezhov could not stop.
In August 1938, Lavrenty Beria was appointed Yezhov's first deputy for the NKVD and head of the Main Directorate of State Security, who replaced the people's commissar in this post. Mikhail Frinovsky.
Yezhov perfectly understood what this meant, but he could no longer change anything. In November 1938, at a meeting of the Politburo, they considered a letter Head of the NKVD Department for the Ivanovo Region Viktor Zhuravlev, who accused Yezhov of omissions in his work and ignoring signals about the activities of "enemies of the people."
Zhuravlev's denunciation was an excellent reason to remove Yezhov. The People's Commissar did not resist, admitted mistakes and on November 23, 1938 he submitted his resignation. On December 9, 1938, Pravda reported that Yezhov had been removed from his duties as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs with the retention of another post for him - People's Commissar of Water Transport.
N. I. Yezhov and I. V. Stalin. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
In January 1939, Yezhov attended a solemn meeting dedicated to the 15th anniversary of Lenin's death, but was no longer elected a delegate to the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b).
With the arrival of Lavrenty Beria as head of the NKVD, the “great terror” ended. Of course, no one thought to recognize him as erroneous, but the activities of Yezhov and his entourage were recognized as erroneous. According to various estimates, after the arrival of Beria, from 200 to 300 thousand people were released from prisons and camps, who were found to be illegally convicted or whose cases were terminated due to the lack of corpus delicti.
Among the extensive charges brought against him, the main one was "preparing a coup and terrorist acts against the top leaders of the USSR." The icing on the cake of the accusations was an article for sodomy - Yezhov himself admitted to homosexual inclinations.
At the trial, Yezhov denied preparing terrorist acts, stating: “At the preliminary investigation, I said that I was not a spy, I was not a terrorist, but they did not believe me and they used severe beatings on me. During the twenty-five years of my party life, I honestly fought against enemies and destroyed enemies.
However, what Yezhov said was already unimportant. On February 3, 1940, by the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, he was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out the next day, and the corpse was burned in a crematorium on the territory of the Donskoy Monastery.
The arrest and execution of Yezhov was not reported in the Soviet press at all - he simply disappeared. The fact that he was no longer a hero of the Land of the Soviets could only be understood from the reverse renaming of the streets and settlements named after him.
Because of this, the most incredible rumors circulated about Yezhov, to the point that he fled to Nazi Germany and serves as an adviser Hitler.
Nikolai Yezhov is not the most popular figure among the figures of the Soviet era. But he was suddenly remembered in 2008, after being elected to the post US President Barack Obama. It turned out that the facial features of the new owner of the White House are surprisingly similar to those of Nikolai Yezhov. Such is the irony of fate...
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 hard it is. It is necessary to tell the truth, because it is with the truth that we beat the trumps out of the hands of the anti-Soviet
If in the thirties there was any person comparable in popularity to Stalin, it was Yezhov. Yezhov was in drawings, posters, at demonstrations, sat in the presidiums, poems were dedicated to him, letters were written to him.
I will not go into Yezhov's legal 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 he could neither understand nor realize it. 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 should be held responsible for this. Without touching on a number of objective facts that, in best case can explain something bad job, I want to dwell only on my personal fault 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, did not cover the entire amount of the most complex intelligence work. My fault is that I did not put this question in time with all the acuteness, in the Bolshevik way, before the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). Secondly, my fault is that, seeing a number of major shortcomings in my work, moreover, even criticizing these shortcomings in my own People's Commissariat, I did not at the same time raise these questions before the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Satisfied with individual successes, covering up shortcomings, floundering alone, he tried to straighten things out. It was hard to straighten out - then I was nervous. Thirdly, my fault is that I approached the placement of personnel purely Deliacheski. In many cases, politically distrusting the worker, he delayed the issue of his arrest, waited until another one was selected. For the same businesslike motives, he made a mistake in many workers, recommended them to responsible posts, and they are now exposed as spies. Fourthly, my fault is that I showed a completely unacceptable carelessness for a Chekist in the matter of a decisive purge of the department for the protection of members of the Central Committee and the Politburo. In particular, this carelessness is unforgivable in the case of delaying the arrest of conspirators in the Kremlin (Bryukhanov and others). Fifthly, my fault is that, doubting the political honesty of such people as former boss UNKVD DVK traitor Lyushkov and in Lately The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, Chairman Uspensky, did not take sufficient measures of KGB precaution, and thus made it possible for Lyushkov to hide in Japan and Uspensky still does not know where, the search for which continues. All this, taken together, makes my further work in the NKVD absolutely impossible. Once again I ask you to release me from work in the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Despite all these big shortcomings and blunders in my work, I must say that under the daily leadership of the Central Committee of the NKVD, they crushed the enemies great. (from a note by N.I. Yezhov 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 fault of the Central Committee of 1937-38. in 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.
“Having come to the NKVD, I was initially alone. I didn’t have an assistant. At first I looked closely at the work, and then began my work by defeating the Polish spies who crawled into all departments of the Cheka. They had Soviet intelligence 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 took up the purge of the contingent of defectors. This is how I began my work in the NKVD. Molchanov was personally exposed by me, and with him others enemies of the people who crawled into the NKVD and occupied responsible positions.I meant 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 enemies and destroyed enemies. I also have such crimes for which I can be shot" (The last word of N. I. Yezhov on litigation February 3, 1940)
"During a search in desk in Yezhov’s office, in one of the boxes, 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, there were four bullets in the package (three from cartridges for the Nagan pistol and one, according apparently, to the revolver "Colt").
The bullets are flattened after being fired. Each bullet was wrapped in a piece of paper with an inscription in pencil on each "Zinoviev", "Kamenev", "Smirnov" (moreover, there were two bullets in a piece of paper with the inscription "Smirnov"). Apparently, these bullets were sent to Yezhov after the execution of the sentence on Zinoviev, Kamenev and others. I have seized the said package.
(From the report of the Captain of State Security Shchepilov on April 11, 1939)
"I cleared 14,000 Chekists. But my fault lies in the fact that I cleaned them little. I had such a situation. I gave the task to this or that head of the department to interrogate the arrested person and at the same time I myself thought: you are interrogating him today, and tomorrow I will arrest you. All around me were enemies of the people, my enemies. Everywhere I purged the Chekists. I didn’t purge only them in Moscow, Leningrad and the North Caucasus. I considered them honest, but in reality it turned out that I was under my wing hid saboteurs, saboteurs, spies and other kinds of enemies of the people.
(The last word of N. I. Yezhov at the trial February 3, 1940)
Even on the last day, Yezhov could not comprehend the horror of which he was the father.
In 1937, the Soviet Union was literally overwhelmed by repression. The 20th anniversary of the punitive organs was celebrated - after all, on December 20, 1917, the Russian Extraordinary Commission was formed. A report on this was made in Bolshoi Theater future long-liver of the Kremlin Anastas Mikoyan. The report was unforgettably titled: "Every citizen is an employee of the NKVD." The practice of daily denunciation was introduced into the minds and consciousness. Denunciation was considered the norm. And Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, who became at the helm of the NKVD, is only a pawn in that scary game for the absolute power that Stalin then led.
Biography and activities of Nikolai Yezhov
Nikolai Yezhov was born on April 19, 1895 according to the old style. According to some reports, his father was a janitor for a landlord. He only attended school for two or three years. Subsequently, filling out the questionnaires, Yezhov wrote in the column "education" - "unfinished lower". In 1910, the teenager was sent to be trained by a tailor. The craft was not to his liking, but from the age of fifteen, as Yezhov himself admitted in the dungeons of the institution, which until recently he himself headed, he became addicted to sodomy. Yezhov paid tribute to this hobby until the end of his life. At the same time, he showed interest in the female sex. One did not interfere with the other. There was something to repent of, as well as something to be proud of.
A year later, the boy broke up with the tailor and entered the factory as an apprentice locksmith. Later, like many of his peers, he was drafted into the Russian imperial army. First World War found him in the provincial provincial Vitebsk. It seemed that fate itself gives a chance to a small ambitious person to excel. However, Yezhov is very soon transferred from the reserve battalion to a non-combat team. The reason is banal and simple - with his height of 151 cm, he looks bad even on the left flank.
Yezhov worked in artillery workshops, where his revolutionary activities began, about which official biographers so loved to write. However, historians have not been able to find any intelligible evidence of this activity. Yezhov joined the Bolshevik Party in May 1917. What if it's early? He did not wait and was not cautious, like others - he accepted new power immediately and unconditionally. After a spontaneous demobilization from the tsarist army, traces of Yezhov are lost for some time.
A year and a half of his biography is a "dark time" for historians. In April 1919, he was called up again - this time to the Red Army. But again, he does not get to the front and not even to the artillery unit, but to the position of scribe under the commissar. Despite being illiterate, he managed to establish himself as an activist, and soon went on to a promotion. Six months later, Yezhov became the commissioner of the radio school. Nothing heroic civil war Thus, fate did not prepare him.
Small growth did not allow him to become a real soldier. He also became an obstacle to an operatic career, although Yezhov sang beautifully. Nikolai Ivanovich had a phenomenal memory - he remembered a lot by heart and firmly. Small people prevailed in Stalin's entourage (how can one not recall Mandelstam's famous line: “And around him is a rabble of thin-necked leaders”) and Yezhov, as they say, came to court. At a certain period, Yezhov became the closest person to Stalin. He was in the Boss's office daily and for a long time.
Stalin needed a man without merits before the revolution and not connected with the highest echelon of power. Yezhov fit perfectly. He passed the test in the history of the death of Kirov in December 1934. With the hands of Yezhov, Stalin dealt with Zinoviev and Kamenev. It was a rehearsal for future great repressions. Yezhov replaced Genrikh Yagoda as Minister of the Interior. He is at the peak of his career. In his hands - the fate of hundreds of thousands of those sentenced to death. The army was beheaded. Many well-known military leaders led by .
Everything human gradually burned out in Yezhov. He never tried to protect anyone. Soon this man turned into a heavy alcoholic and a pederast. At the same time, he knew how to be charming and like women, after the flows of blood he easily switched to everyday life. With his wife, Evgenia Ivanovna Khayutina, they had no children, so they adopted the three-year-old Natasha. There was an art salon in the Yezhovs' house, Babel, Koltsov, singers and musicians often visited.
In the end, Yezhov was appointed People's Commissar for Water Transport, and he came in his place. April 10, 1939 followed the arrest of Yezhov. Shortly before this, Yezhov's wife shot herself, probably in anticipation of the inevitable denouement. Yezhov was accused of both abuse of office and an immoral lifestyle. He himself, admitting all the accusations, regretted that he was not merciless enough towards the enemies of the people and could have shot several times more than he was allowed to. He was shot on February 4, 1940 by the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.
- They say that before his death, Yezhov was stripped naked and beaten mercilessly, and then they shot into a lifeless body. He was surrounded in those last minutes by investigators and guards - those who trembled before him when Yezhov was the all-powerful people's commissar. Terrible and inglorious end...
Saint Petersburg
VKVS building, Moscow
2) Evgenia Solomonovna Gladun-Khayutina
stepdaughter: Natalia
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov(April 19 (May 1) - February 4) - Soviet state and political figure, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR (-), General Commissar of State Security (). The year during which Yezhov was in office - - became a symbolic designation of repression; this period itself very soon began to be called the Yezhovshchina. Because of his short stature (151 cm), he was popularly nicknamed the "Bloody Dwarf".
Childhood and youth
In his questionnaires and autobiographies, Yezhov claimed that he was born in 1895 in St. Petersburg in 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, who was born in the Tula province, received promotion and was appointed zemstvo guard of the Mariampol city district, - she moved to Mariampol. His mother, Anna Antonovna, was Lithuanian.
In 1906, Nikolai Yezhov went to St. Petersburg to study with a tailor, a relative. The father drank himself 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.
Carier start
Data on Yezhov's activities in the field of intelligence proper and counterintelligence 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, General E. K. Miller () was abducted by the NKVD in Paris and a number of operations against Japan were carried out, a number of murders of persons objectionable to Stalin were organized abroad.
Yezhov was considered one of the main "leaders", his portraits were published in newspapers and attended rallies. The poster of Boris Efimov "Hedgehogs" was widely known, where the people's commissar takes iron 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 Dzhabaev (according to some sources, composed by the "translator" Mark Tarlovsky). Constant epithets - "Stalin's people's commissar", "the 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 had not known that Nikolai Ivanovich had an incomplete lower education behind him, I might have thought that a well-educated person writes so fluently, so deftly uses the word. The scale of his activities is also striking. After all, it was this nondescript, uneducated person who organized the construction of the White Sea Canal (his predecessor Yagoda began this “work”), the Northern Route, and 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 concurrently appointed People's Commissar for Water Transport (NKVT): this position was related to his previous activities, since the canal network served as an important means of internal communication of the country, ensuring state security, and was often erected by prisoners. After on November 19, 1938, the Politburo discussed the denunciation of 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 in Moscow and the Moscow region, and on December 31, 1938 was arrested and soon shot), on November 23, Yezhov wrote to the Politburo and personally to Stalin a letter of resignation. In the petition, Yezhov took responsibility for the wrecking activities of various "enemies of the people" who, through an oversight, infiltrated the NKVD and the prosecutor's office, as well as for the flight of a number of intelligence officers and ordinary NKVD employees abroad (in 1937, the NKVD envoy for the Far Eastern Territory, Lyushkov, fled to Japan, to at the same time, an employee of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR, Uspensky, disappeared in an unknown direction, etc.), admitted that he “approached the placement of personnel in a businesslike manner,” 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 big shortcomings and blunders in my work, I must say that under the daily leadership of the Central Committee of the NKVD, 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, per. 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
Links
| Predecessor: |
"Iron People's Commissar" was sentenced to death already at the time of his appointment to a high position
"Yezhovshchina" is a biting Soviet word that appeared in the domestic press in 1939. The same people who two years earlier sang the praises of the "iron commissar" began to hoot contemptuously, seeing him off to trial and execution. The best of the assistants Nikolai Yezhov, personally tortured the former boss, knocking out of him confessions of treason.
What happened? Why Joseph Stalin(and without him such decisions were not made) gave the order to destroy a man who fought his enemies more fiercely than anyone else?
Executioner instead of a businessman
To understand why Stalin needed Yezhov at all, it is necessary to figure out who was the predecessor Nikolai Ivanovich and where did this predecessor go.
Genrikh Grigorievich Yagoda headed the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs from the day the department was created in 1934, and before that for several years he was the actual head of the OGPU (the formal head of the Office Vyacheslav Menzhinsky last years almost never got out of bed). Member of the RSDLP since 1907, faithful comrade, unbending revolutionary, friend Dzerzhinsky and Menzhinsky, it was he who stood at the beginning of what is now called mass repression. No, and before that times were by no means vegetarian, but Yagoda put the fight against objectionable elements not only on a mass basis, but also on a commercial basis. The main directorate of the camps, the Gulag, is Yagoda's masterpiece of thought: from ordinary penal colonies and death camps, he built a well-thought-out production system, which became essential part Soviet economy.
Yagoda's methods of work did not suit many party members, they objected to his appointment to the highest police position, but the murder Sergei Kirov in December 1934, everything was written off: the flywheel of repression was launched. by the most high-profile case the time of Yagoda was the defeat of the "opposition Zinoviev - Kamenev»: the bullets that were used to shoot these former leaders Soviet state, Yagoda kept it as a keepsake. Subsequently, Yagoda took up the "criminal group Bukharin - Rykov”, but only managed to start the business: a little later he would be shot as a member of the same “criminal group”.
At the same time, Yagoda himself was an opponent of executions: he treated those arrested with the prudence of a good owner. In his view, the punitive-corrective system was supposed to work for the good of the country, and not waste human material. The White Sea Canal, for the construction of which Yagoda received the Order of Lenin with the help of prisoners, was distinguished by a relatively mild (by Soviet standards) regime, there were still methods of encouraging prisoners, preferential offsets for the term; the best-performing convict workers even received state awards. There is no doubt that Yagoda would have become a big businessman in the West; even from the USSR, according to some reports, he managed to arrange an illegal supply of timber to the United States with payment credited to his Swiss account.
Of course, the businessman could not fulfill Stalin's task - the elimination of an entire generation of Bolsheviks in order to start building a system with clean slate. Therefore, the executioner came to replace him.
Great terror
Almost all members of the Stalinist elite were people of extremely short stature (165 cm Yagoda remained one of the tallest in that government), but Yezhov stood out even among them: 151 centimeters! The lack of physical data, however, did not prevent him from having an incredible capacity for work. One of the leaders of the young Yezhov wrote in the early 1930s:
“I do not know a more ideal worker than Yezhov. Or rather, not an employee, but a performer. Having entrusted him with something, you can not check and be sure - he will do everything. Yezhov has only one, however, a significant drawback: he does not know how to stop. Sometimes there are situations when it is impossible to do something, you have to stop. Yezhov - does not stop. And sometimes you have to watch him in order to stop him in time.
In 1936, Yagoda was transferred to the Commissariat of Communications. Stalin then wrote to his comrades in the Politburo:
“We consider it absolutely necessary and urgent to appoint comrade Yezhov was promoted to the post of People's Commissar. Yagoda was clearly not up to the task of exposing the Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc of the OGPU, he was 4 years late in this matter. All party workers and the majority of regional representatives of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs speak about this.
The most terrible years in the history of the USSR. Unlike Yagoda, who, apparently, did not even personally participate in torture, Nikolai Yezhov put the beatings on stream; insufficiently zealous investigators themselves became victims. Mass repressions went from September 1936 to October 1938.
Having settled into his new position, Yezhov became the No. 3 man in the Soviet hierarchy - he was only closer to the leader Vyacheslav Molotov. For 1937-1938. Yezhov entered Stalin's office 290 times - and the average duration of the meeting was almost three hours. This, by the way, is an answer to those who believe that Stalin “knew nothing” about torture and repression. It was impossible not to know: for example, at the beginning of 1935, 37 people in the USSR had the title of state security commissars - they held high positions, they were afraid and considered omnipotent, the appointment of each of them was personally approved by Stalin. Two of these 37 survived until the spring of 1940.
At the same time, there was a second wave of repressions against the kulaks (by that time they had long been former), as well as cleansing operations in national republics and autonomy. In general, during Yezhov's work at the head of the people's commissariat, 681,692 people were shot on political charges alone, and even more were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
The most famous victims of this period (in addition to the Chekists themselves, among whom were the most brutal purges) were military leaders Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Iona Yakir, Vasily Blucher, Pavel Dybenko, physicist, economist Nikolai Kondratiev, poets Sergei Klychkov, Osip Mandelstam, Pavel Vasiliev, Vladimir Narbut, director Vsevolod Meyerhold and many, many others. Miraculously survived those who in the future will become the pride of the nation: Sergei Korolev, Lev Gumilyov, Nikolay Zabolotsky... The absolute uselessness of these victims and the inadequacy of the initiators of terror today do not raise any doubts. A normal person simply would not and would not be able to organize such a thing: this is where the “ideal performer” Yezhov came in handy.
In the USSR, a real personality cult of Yezhov was organized. They wrote about him school essays and ceremonial portraits, labor exploits and solemn feasts were dedicated to him. Kazakh poet Jambul wrote:
... The snake enemy breed is revealed
Through the eyes of Yezhov - through the eyes of the people.
Yezhov lay in wait for all poisonous snakes
And smoked reptiles out of holes and lairs.
Defeated the whole scorpion breed
By the hands of Yezhov - by the hands of the people.
And Lenin's order, burning with fire,
Was given to you, Stalin's faithful people's commissar.
You are a sword, drawn calmly and menacingly,
The fire that scorched the nests of snakes
You are the bullet for all the scorpions and snakes
You are the eye of the country, which is clearer than a diamond ...
In April 1938, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov received the post of People's Commissar of Water Transport "as a load", which, as in the case of the "People's Commissar for Communications" Yagoda, was a signal of imminent disgrace.
Scapegoat
What happened, why did Stalin lose faith in "an eye clearer than a diamond"? In 1941, a year after the execution of the "iron commissar", the "father of peoples" would say:
"Yezhov is a scoundrel! Decayed man. You call him at the People's Commissariat - they say: he left for the Central Committee. You call the Central Committee - they say: he left for work. You send it to his house - it turns out that he is lying on the bed dead drunk. Killed many innocents. We shot him for it."
Of course, Stalin was cunning, and 850 hours of his meetings with Yezhov in a year and a half are true evidence of this. Stalin had no sudden disappointment in Yezhov. Nikolai Ivanovich was initially chosen as a disposable tool for the dirtiest work, for which other figures of that time were of little use.
Overwhelmed by complexes, envious of all men of normal growth, Yezhov became exactly the person Stalin needed to first carry out repressions, and then shift all responsibility for them. It seems that already at the time of Yezhov’s appointment, Stalin knew that after the “acute phase” of repressions, he would be replaced by Lavrenty Beria who will work with a subdued, submissive contingent.
In November 1938, Nikolai Yezhov, who was still at large and even headed two people's commissariats, wrote a denunciation of himself to the Politburo, where he admitted responsibility for sabotage activities in the NKVD and the prosecutor's office, and his inability to interfere. Two days later, this kind of resignation was accepted: just as Yezhov sat Yagoda in jail, so Beria organized an attack on Yezhov himself. Yezhov remained People's Commissar for Water Transport, but everything was already clear: on April 10, he was arrested in his office George Malenkov- by an interesting coincidence, the most good-natured, liberal member of the Stalinist guard.
In the Soviet press, revelations of "excesses" appeared - Yezhov was declared a member of the Trotskyist group that destroyed the old Bolsheviks and prepared terrorist acts.
As expected at that time, sexual motives were added to the accusations of sabotage and espionage: a rubber phallus and pornographic cards were found on Yagoda, and Yezhov, as they say now, came out: he admitted his unconventional orientation.
And their last words at the trial were somewhat similar. When the prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky asked: “What are you sorry about, spy and criminal Yagoda?”, He replied: “I am very sorry ... I am very sorry that when I could do this, I did not shoot you all.” And Yezhov bitterly stated: "I cleaned 14,000 Chekists, but my great fault lies in the fact that I cleaned them a little."
