Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov

Nikolai Jeschow (1937)

Nikolai Yezhov ( Russian Николай Иванович Ежов , scientific. Transliteration Nikolai Ivanovich Ezov ; April * 19 ^{. Jul} / 1. May  1895 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg , † 4. February 1940 in Moscow ) was the chief of the Soviet 1936-1938 Secret Police NKVD . He was responsible for the application of the “ Great Terror ” ordered by Stalin , which resulted in nearly 800,000 documented deaths. Including the number of unreported cases, between 950,000 and 1.2 million people died. A total of around 2.5 million were arrested. This time was therefore also known as Yezhovshchina (ежовщина, 'Yezhov time') in the Soviet population . The shooting of Yezhov also had the propagandistic purpose of portraying him as the main culprit in the Great Terror and to “cleanse” the Stalinist regime of responsibility in the public consciousness. Yezhov was the only ethnic Russian who held the post of intelligence chief during Stalin's reign.

biography

Before the Russian Revolution

Much information about Yezhov's early years is unclear. When he was arrested in April 1939, Nikolai Yezhov stated that he was born on May 1, 1895 in Saint Petersburg.

After a short school training, he was a tailor's assistant as a teenager, later a factory worker and worked in various cities. In the meantime, he self- taught himself further knowledge and got involved in the first strikes. In 1915 he was drafted into the Russian army , where he began his service in an artillery workshop in Vitebsk from 1916 to 1917 .

Early party career

Yezhov joined the Bolshevik Party on May 5, 1917 in Vitebsk . Author Viktor Suvorov commented on Yezhov's motives as follows: Yezhov "was an insignificant official who only joined the Bolsheviks when it became clear that they had won." During the Russian Civil War he fought in the Red Army , where he held the post of Political Commissar . Because of his loyalty to the party, he was elected leader of agitation and propaganda in several provincial committees in 1921 and finally in the Central Committee of the CPSU of Tatarstan . It was during a stay at a spa in Moscow that he probably met Stalin for the first time. From March 1922 he worked as a secretary in the regional party committee of the Bolsheviks in the Turkmen region of Mary . Here he was not accepted and in the autumn of the same year he moved to Semipalatinsk (today Semei ). Further stations were Orenburg and Ksyl-Orda (now Qysylorda ) in Kazakhstan , where he started working in May 1924. After resistance against NEP arose in this region , which, according to the historian Alexander Fadeev, arose due to a "faulty interpretation of property relations", and the Kazakh independence movement strengthened, Yezhov managed to temporarily end the uprising peacefully. In Kazakhstan he also began studying the works of Marx and Lenin in order to improve his Marxist-Leninist rhetoric.

In 1927 he was taken over by Ivan Moskvin in the organization and distribution department of the Central Committee of the CPSU because of his skills as an "ideal executor " . There he acted as a trainer and later as head of this department. From 1929 to 1930 he was Deputy People's Commissar for Agriculture. In this position, he first witnessed massive repression against the rural population by the OGPU , the forerunner to the NKVD . He published articles in which he justified the forced collectivization and the new forms of proletarian training. At that time he was not yet feared. IA Stats, a colleague of Yezhov's at the time, later described that Yezhov “was by and large not a 'ruthless cadre' at that time […] He gave the impression of a nervous but friendly and attentive person who was not arrogant or bureaucratic Exhibited behavior. "

Yezhov continued to be involved in the party apparatus. In November 1930, at Josef Stalin's instigation, he was appointed head of the commissariats for special affairs, personnel issues and industry. In these functions he was one of the leaders in the purge of “opportunist” members and “oppositionists” against Stalin's policies from the Bolsheviks in 1933. A total of 200,000 members were expelled from the party. About a tenth of those affected were arrested.

Promotion to head of the NKVD

In 1934, Yezhov was elected to the Central Committee of the CPSU. After the murder of Sergei Kirov Yezhov Special Representative of the Secretary Stalin and participated in mind that now the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) Affiliate OGPU under Genrikh Yagoda her research on the opposition Lev Kamenev , Grigory Zinoviev and Nikolai Bukharin hosted and finally a constructed terrorist conspiracy, in which many opponents of Stalin should have participated together. He also proved his loyalty to Stalin and his goals through writings he wrote in 1935, in which he argued that political opposition would lead to chaos and anarchy if it were not consistently destroyed.

Dealing with party members branded as opposition became tougher. Yezhov played a crucial role in tightening the measures to suppress dissenters. He campaigned several times for longer-term and tougher controls, demanded high numbers of expulsions and arrests, and steered a chauvinist campaign to enforce Stalin's political line. He exposed conspiracies everywhere. His commitment eventually led to his own overhaul and a spa stay to alleviate his numerous physical ailments. During the first Moscow trial in 1936, which led to the conviction and execution of Kamenev and Zinoviev and further consolidated Stalin's power, Yezhov presumably created confessions, denunciations and false evidence through torture . As several sources later made clear, Yezhov had Stalin directed many of his activities in Moscow.

After Jeschow had already assisted the NKVD chief Jagoda in the initial phase of the Great Terror , he replaced him on September 30, 1936. With him about 300 followers were accepted into the hierarchy of the NKVD. After several years of probation in higher positions in the party apparatus, Stalin now expected Yezhov to implement faster and more intensive cleansing measures. With Stalin's protection, he was quickly accepted in his new position. His establishment was also positively interpreted by the population as the end of terror under the unpopular Jagoda. However, according to Stalin's expectations, Yezhov began to put into practice the ideas he had expressed a year earlier.

Execution of the Great Terror

At just under 1.50 m tall, Jeschow turned out to be the "bloodthirsty dwarf" that he was later referred to as. From that point on, the NKVD's terror developed with a brutality that was unique in the entire history of the Soviet Union. Pseudo-courts called NKVD troikas were introduced, which were allowed to pronounce arbitrary judgments against real and alleged oppositionists. Plan targets for the liquidation and arrest of enemies of the state were set, which were increased as the persecution progressed. The regional and local NKVD forces feared that they would be suspected of conspiracy themselves if the target figures were not met, and by over-fulfilling the requirements drove the number of people arrested even higher. The number of victims of repression during Yezhov's tenure is controversial. It fluctuates between 1,575,259 arrested and 681,692 real and alleged opposition figures murdered and 767,000 people, of whom 387,000 were executed.

In a first phase, which lasted until the summer of 1937, prominent victims such as Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin were sentenced to death in three major show trials known as the Moscow Trials. Yezhov's predecessor Yagoda was denounced on March 18, 1937 because of the embezzlement he had actually committed and as a former Tsarist police chief. At the same time, Jagoda's higher-ranking followers were instructed to check the political reliability of all state organs in the Soviet Union. About 3,000 NKVD members were denounced as Jagoda supporters and removed from the authorities. Genrich Jagoda was executed as a result of the last Moscow trial.

After the “cleansing” of the leadership levels of the party and the army, the terror turned itself against the Russian population and against party members at all levels. This second phase, initiated with the NKVD order No. 00447 , lasted from the summer of 1937 until the end of Yezhov's term in office and cost the lives of most of the victims. While a show trial was held for important personalities with judgments that had already been approved by Stalin, the ordinary victims received their punishment for violating Section 58. The confessions were given to people who were mostly arbitrarily arrested and to those of NKVD members Even invented crimes were charged, coerced with torture. Even Yezhov himself insisted on interrogating the accused personally. During Yezhov's time in office, the NKVD members had the opportunity to let their sadism towards their victims run wild without having to reckon with punishment from their superiors.

Yezhov received the Order of Lenin for his services on July 17, 1937 . The Soviet press and the communist party celebrated it. In a huge propaganda campaign, the enemies of the people, "Jezhov's spiked mittens" were highly praised.

Like Stalin, Yezhov mostly worked at night and slept during the day. He lived in a simple Kremlin apartment with his mother and only appeared occasionally at his wife's house.

End of career and execution

In 1938 Yezhov's political fall followed. It had become evident that the Great Terror associated with Yezhov's person had already exceeded its goal of destroying the opposition in the Soviet Union. Because of denunciations, in some rajons there were no party members left and party influence disappeared. The Red Army was also severely weakened by the excessively excessive purges; there was a lack of competent officers at the upper and especially the middle level. In the meantime, the influence of Yezhov's power apparatus continued to grow: With the purge of the GRU , which culminated with the arrest of Jan Bersin on November 27, 1937, and the subsequent subordination of this military foreign espionage service to his authority, Yezhov had practically control over all secret services taken over by the Soviet Union. The terror, now perceived by Stalin as a threat to his power, should be scaled back.

In early 1938, Yezhov suffered a major defeat when he unsuccessfully proposed that Moscow be renamed "Stalinodar". His excessive drinking habits and dissolute sexual lifestyle made him vulnerable to the intrigues of other party members. After two high-ranking secret service employees, Alexander Orlow from the foreign department of the NKVD and the GRU agent Walter Kriwitzki, had fled abroad, one very quickly doubted Ezhov's own loyalty.

In addition, the excessive wave of arrests caused overcrowding in the prisons and labor camps of the Gulag system. Many of the newly arrived inmates died of exhaustion or were so weak that they could not work. However, an important reason for the existence of the gulag system was to exploit the inmates' labor to produce cheap goods. The poor treatment of the prisoners, however, severely weakened the economic strength of this "state enterprise". Due to the poor fulfillment of plans by the Gulag companies, this development was also visible to the rest of the Soviet leadership in the summer of 1938. It was blamed on Yezhov as a grave failure. In addition, he demanded ever larger sums from the Soviet leadership for the implementation of his persecution measures; in a letter to Vyacheslav Molotov dated February 1938, for example , instead of the planned 22 million rubles, he declared a requirement of 94 million rubles.

When Yezhov attacked Molotov because he had requested information about the activities of the NKVD organs, he had to apologize on instructions from Stalin. On August 22, 1938 Lavrenti Beria Jeschow was placed as an assistant in the management of the NKVD. Beria began to drive Yezhov out of his office.

It started with arrests around his wife. In October 1938, Kremlin doctors came to see her, admitted her to a sanatorium and diagnosed her with an “asthenic-depressive state ( cyclothymia ?).” She wrote her husband from the sanatorium in desperate letters that she was accused of duplicity and crimes that had not been committed.

As a result, Yezhov became depressed and got even more drunk. At the same time he tried to discredit his competitor. In November 1938, Beria was shadowed by Yezhov's men and should possibly be arrested. However, Beria was able to go to Stalin and inform him about obvious grievances in the NKVD that he had found out in the meantime. Thereupon Stalin and Molotov criticized the procedures and methods of the NKVD in a letter dated November 11, 1938. On November 15, the jurisdiction of the so-called NKVD troikas was suspended. On November 17th, the Sovnarkom and the Central Committee of the CPSU banned mass arrests and deportations. On November 24th, Yezhov was replaced by Beria, officially at his own request. The replacement of Yezhov by Beria was announced to the Soviet public on December 5, 1938 by the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia, and received with relief. On December 7, 1938, he was dismissed as People's Commissar for Home Affairs.

After that, there were arrests and suicides among the staff of the NKVD, as Beria began to purge the office of Yezhov's supporters and replace them with his own. Yezhov's wife died in November of Luminal poisoning and was diagnosed with suicide.

Yezhov was demoted to People's Commissar for Inland Shipping. He was present at meetings of his People's Commissariat, but did not take the floor, instead folding paper planes . On January 21, 1939, he took part in the commemorative meeting on the 15th anniversary of Lenin's death . When the 18th party congress of the CPSU met in March 1939, Yezhov, who was still a member of the Central Committee, was one of the participants in a meeting of the Council of Elders. Delegate JG Feldman left Roi Medvedev a report on the process:

When candidates were to be proposed for election to the Central Committee, Yezhov's name was mentioned, followed by an icy silence. Stalin called Yezhov to the front and asked him if he thought he could be a member of the Central Committee. When Yezhov asserted that he loved Stalin more than his life, Stalin asked him about various former subordinates, all of whom had already been arrested at the time. Stalin claimed that NKVD leaders had prepared a conspiracy. Yezhov had many innocent people arrested and covered others. He, Stalin, had his doubts whether Yezhov could remain a member of the Central Committee. Thereupon, Yezhov was unanimously removed from the list. He left the hall and did not return.

Until March 22, 1939, Yezhov was a candidate for the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . On April 10, 1939, he was arrested as a "particularly dangerous enemy of the people " during a meeting in his people's commissariat . He was accused of having worked for various foreign secret services since 1930 and of having initiated a conspiracy to assassinate Stalin. The bisexual Yezhov was also accused of being homosexual and of murdering his wife Yevgenia Salomonovna. During the interrogation he accepted the allegations against him without resistance, but denied most of them during the trial. On 2 February 1940 he was one of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court sentenced to death on February 4 in the basement of Butyrka -Gefängnisses shot . His unconditional submission to Stalin was shown once again in his farewell letter, in which he expressed the following wish to his executioners : "Tell Stalin that I will die with his name on my lips." The execution of Yezhov was carried out by Vasily Blochin . After the execution, the body was cremated and the ashes were anonymously buried in the Donskoy cemetery .

After his death, Yezhov should never have existed near Stalin. In order to realize the imposed Damnatio memoriae , his picture was retouched from various photographs showing him with Stalin. In contrast to many other victims of the Stalinist judiciary, he was never posthumously rehabilitated because of the crimes he had actually committed as head of the NKVD .

literature

• Jörg Baberowski : Scorched Earth. Stalin's rule of violence . CH Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63254-9 .
• J. Arch Getty , Oleg V. Naumov : Yezhov. The Rise of Stalin's "Iron Fist" ; Yale University Press, 2008; ISBN 0-300-09205-9 .
• Alexander Michailowitsch Orlow : The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes ; Random House, 1953
• Oleg Vitalievich Chlewnjuk : The History of the Gulag ; Yale University Press New Haven & London, 2004; ISBN 0-300-09284-9 .
• Б. Б. Брюхонов, Е.Н. Шошков (BB Brjuchonow, EN Shoschkow): Оправданию не подлежит: Ежов и ежовщина, 1936–1938 гг (acquittal is not possible: Jeschow and the Jeschowchina 1936 to 1938); ООО "Петровский фонд" Saint Petersburg 1998; ISBN 5-7559-0022-1 .
• Marc Jansen, Nikitia Petrov: Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov ; Hoover Institution Press, 2002; ISBN 0-8179-2902-9 .
• Антон Антонов-Овсеенко: Бе́рия ; Фирма Издательство ACT, Moscow, 1999; ISBN 5-237-03178-1 .
• Алексей Полянский: ЕЖОВ - История "железного" сталинского наркома ; Moscow, 2001; ISBN 5-7838-0825-3 .
• Roy Medvedev : Let History Judge ; Columbia University Press, 1989; ISBN 0-231-06351-2 .
• Viktor Suvorov : Inside Soviet Military Intelligence ; Macmillan Pub. Co., 1984; ISBN 0-02-615510-9 .
• Simon Sebag Montefiore: Stalin - The Court of the Red Tsar ; Alfred A. Knopf, a Division of Random House, New York, 2004; ISBN 1-4000-4230-5 .
• Donald Rayfield: Stalin and his Hangmen. The Tyrant and those who killed for him ; Random House, 2004; ISBN 0-375-50632-2 .
• Dimitri Volkogonov : Stalin. Triumph and tragedy. A political portrait . From the Russian by Vesna Jovanoska, Econ Verlag Düsseldorf, 1989, 3rd edition 1996; ISBN 3-430-19847-X .
• Gerd Koenen : Utopia of Purification. What was communism , Alexander Fest Verlag, Berlin 1998; ISBN 3-8286-0058-1 .
• Alan Bullock : Hitler and Stalin. Parallel lives . Siedler, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-442-12757-2 .
• Н. В. Петров, К. В. Скоркин (NW Petrow, KW Skorkin): Кто руководил НКВД, 1934–1941 - Справочник (who directed the NKVD, 1934–1941 - directory); Swenja-Verlag 1999; ISBN 5-7870-0032-3 . on-line

Web links

Commons : Николай Иванович Ежов  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Nikolai Iwanowitsch Jeschow in the catalog of the German National Library
• Brief biographical note on the website of the Russian domestic secret service FSB (Russian)
• Review of a book about Yezhov as PDF (85 kB)
• CV , AZ Library (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Brjuchonow, Schoschkow: acquittal is not possible: Jeschow und die Jeschowtschina 1936–1938 , p. ???
2. ↑ Suvorov: Inside Soviet Military Intelligence
3. ↑ Getty, Naumov: Yezhov ; P. 61.
4. ↑ Translated quote from Roy Medvedev : Let History Judge ; Columbia University Press 1989; ISBN 0-231-06351-2 ; P. 358 f .: "He [Jeschow] was not at all a 'ruthless operator' at that time [...] he gave people the impression of a nervous but well-meaning and attentive person, free of arrogance and bureaucratic manners".
5. ^ ^{A b c} Norman Polmar, Thomas B. Allen: Spy Book - The Encyclopedia of Espionage ; Greenhill Books London 1997; ISBN 1-85367-278-5 .
6. ↑ Khlevniuk: The History of the Gulag , p. 165.
7. ↑ Werth: Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 187-189.
8. ↑ Khlevniuk: The History of the Gulag , pp. 144-145.
9. ↑ see Oleg V. Khlevniuk: The history of the Gulag. From Collectivization to the Great Terror ; Yale University Press, 2004; ISBN 0-300-09284-9 .
10. ↑ Gerd Koenen: Utopie der Säuberung , 1998, p. 265.
11. ↑ Volkogonov: Stalin , p. 434.
12. ↑ Yezhov completely switched off . In: Pariser Tageszeitung , No. 967 of April 11, 1939, p. 2.
13. ^ Alan Bullock: Hitler and Stalin. Parallel lives . Siedler, Berlin 1991, p. 667.
14. ↑ Extensive quotation of the Feldman report in Alan Bullock: Hitler and Stalin. Parallel lives . Siedler, Berlin 1991, pp. 667-668.
15. ^ Alan Bullock: Hitler and Stalin. Parallel lives . Siedler, Berlin 1991, p. 669.
16. ^ Peter Gosztony : Stalin's mass persecution 1937/38. Terror and overthrow of Nikolai Jeschow . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of January 7, 1999, p. 35.
17. ↑ Baberowski: Scorched Earth , p. 362.

Remarks

1. ↑ At the beginning of the 1930s the Kazakhs were also affected by forced collectivization. The spontaneous uprisings against land expropriation were bloodily suppressed by the Red Army .
2. ↑ Note on this source: Jeschow is represented in this encyclopedia in two lemmas that do not contradict each other in terms of content: Ezhov, Commisar-Gen. of State Security Nikolai Ivanovich and Yezhov, Nikolai Ivanowich.