Copyright © 1998 by Hugo S. Cunningham
first posted 980723
latest minor change 2008/1210

Contents

Biographical entry in "Who's Who"

Some general remarks: Ezhov's significance

The Great Purge
Who was to blame? Yezhov or Stalin?

Sources

relatively few available
a list of those used

A full-length book
Some direct references to N.I. Yezhov
Some indirect (background) material

Revisionists vs. anti-Soviets

This head-shot of N.I. Yezhov was taken from a portrait in "Bol'shevistskaya Pechat'", 1937, Issue #7, p. 1. It commemorated N.I. Yezhov's award of the Order of Lenin, 17 July 1937. For the full portrait and the official citation, see "y-order.html."

[Note-- the spellings "Yezhov" and "Ezhov" are interchangeable, reflecting different transcription systems.]

"Who's Who" entry

From Jeanne Vronskaya and Vladimir Chuguev, "Kto Est' Kto v Rossii i Byvshem SSSR" ("Who's Who in Russia and the Former USSR"), "Terra," Moscow, 1994; p. 184:

Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov
1895-1939
Head of State Security, 1936-38

Bolshevik from April 1917. In the [Russian] Civil War, was a political commissar in the Red Army, later held same post in a province. Member of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1934. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs [Russian initials-- NKVD] in 1936 after the arrest and fall of Yagoda. Chairman of the Commission of Party Control and member of the Politburo, 1937. Removed from his post in the NKVD, Dec. 1938, and named People's Commissar of Water Transport. Arrested and disappeared in March 1939. Executed shortly after arrest.

A complete nonentity, whose name, during the brief period of his administration, evoked horror throughout the entire country and entered history in the word "Ezhovshchina" [a curiously bland term, perhaps "the Yezhov thing" --HSC]. He was raised to power by Stalin for the specific purpose of setting up a bloodbath. In the Soviet press, he was called the "Iron Commissar," but among the people he was named the "bloody dwarf." [Ezhov was only 154 cm tall, about 5'1". Two other famous Russians of comparably short height were Nikita Khrushchev and Alexander Pushkin --HSC] According to those who knew him well, toward the end of his administration, he was totally dependent on narcotics.

Even in comparison with his predecessor Yagoda, who, as they say, "shot [people] with his own hands and enjoyed the spectacle," and his successor Beriya, who shot him, Ezhov distinguished himself as a bloody hangman, one of the most repulsive figures of the Stalin era. At the 20th Congress of the Party in October 1956, Khrushchov called him a "criminal" and "drug addict, deserving punishment." The shocking crimes of Ezhov were fully investigated after 1987.

---- end of article in "Who's Who" ---

Yezhov headed the NKVD (secret police) at the height of Stalin's Great Purge (1936-39). Hundreds of thousands were tortured and shot for no rational reason, and millions were sent to die of malnutrition and exposure in Siberian camps.

The body count during the Great Purge was less than for Collectivization (1929-33), but it was more traumatic for Soviet urban and professional classes, many of whom had been largely unaware of the peasant holocaust in "collectivized" Ukrainian villages.

Yezhov's exceptionally bad reputation was at least partly due to people's reluctance to blame Stalin (whether from fear of denunciation, or from genuine reverence). As Stalin's own criminal record and sociopathic personality have been increasingly revealed in recent years, however, it becomes clear that Yezhov was merely his agent (though only a sadistic degenerate -- or, in Yezhov's own case, a pliable moral cipher -- would have qualified for the job).

N.I. Yezhov's surname (a fairly common one) is derived from the Russian word for "hedgehog." NKVD flatterers pointed out that a pun off his name, "derzhat' [kogo-nibud'] v ezhovykh rukavitsakh" ("to grip [someone] in hedgehog gloves") is a Russian idiom meaning "to deal harshly with [someone]." (The English-language phrases "mailed fist," "iron grip," and "to rule with an iron hand" have somewhat similar connotations.) Friendly (could they be otherwise, if they wanted to live?) cartoonists portrayed the Iron Commissar crushing reptilian "enemies of the people" in his "hedgehog gloves."

Parts of the following sections reflect help from archival workers of the Beverly Hills rayon Party Center for Preservation of Documents and other Historical Material (BevGorRaiKom TsXDiDIM)

Full-length books about N.I. Ezhov

The first English-language biography was published in 2002:
Marc Jansen, Nikita Petrov, Stalin's Loyal Executioner : People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940, Hoover Institution Press; Paperback.
ISBN: 0817929029

Update-- We found on Feb 2003 that the Hoover Institution Press put the Jansen-Petrov biography on line at URL:
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/books/ezhov.html

In 2008 appeared
J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov
(with the assistance of Nadezhda V. Muraveva)
Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin's "Iron Fist"
Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2008;
cloth, 283 pp.

Getty and Naumov accept Jansen and Petrov's account of Yezhov's incumbency as NKVD chief during the Great Purge (1936-1938); as promised in their subtitle, they concentrate on his rise through the Party ranks 1917-1936.

In Russian, we have seen the following two books:

B.B. Bryuxanov and E.N. Shoshkov, Opravdaniyu Ne Podlezhit: Ezhov i Ezhovshchina 1936-1938 ["There Is No Justification: Yezhov and the Yezhovshchina, 1936-1938"), OOO«Petrovskii Fond», S-Peterburg, 1998.
161 pp., cloth. Includes 4 pp. of photos.

Aleksej Ivanovich Polyanskij, Ezhov: istoriya «zheleznogo» stalinskogo narkoma [Yezhov: a History of the "Iron" Stalinist Commissar], Veche/Osobyj Arxiv, Moskva, 2001.
Cloth, 400 pp. Includes 16 pp. of photos.

Some direct references to N.I. Ezhov

Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, Oxford University Press, New York, 1990. ["Terror"]
Conquest started writing about Stalinist terror back in the 1970s. The revelations of "Glasnost" (1988 and after) have confirmed his chronicle of hysteria, torture, treachery, mass murder, and industrial-scale falsification, though not necessarily his Great-Purge death toll estimate (shootings plus camp deaths) in the mid-to-high millions.

J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning editors, Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, 1993. [Getty & Manning]


A collection of articles with viewpoints ranging from "revisionist" through moderate "revisionist" to centrist.
Of particular interest is Boris A. Starkov's article "Narkom Ezhov" (pp. 21-39), a biography of N.I. Ezhov. [Starkov]

[Note to slanderers: "Narkom" is a contraction of "Narodny Kommissar" ("People's Commissar"), and should not be confused with the word "narkoman" ("narcotics addict").]
Prof. Getty himself is apparently planning a book-length biography of "Narkom Ezhov." The progressive vanguard of humanity should write him and encourage him in this inspiring assignment, while warning him against Oppositionist lies. [Later note: this biography finally appeared in 2008.]


David King, The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia, Metropolitan Books, 1997 [King].
Some excellent photos of N.I. Ezhov, as well as the Greatest Genius of All Times and Peoples, and the "enemies of the people" they eliminated together.

V.A. Kovalev, Dva Stalinskix Narkoma ("Two Stalinist Commissars"), Izdatel'skaya Gruppa "Progress," Moscow, 1995. [Kovalev]
A dual biography of OGPU-NKVD chiefs Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda (1934-36) and N.I. Ezhov (1936-38), it lacks much detail about Ezhov's personal life.

Nadezhda Mandelshtam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (translated from the Russian by Max Hayward), Atheneum, New York, 1970; pp. 322-325 [Mandelstam]
Mandelstam describes the last four years of her husband, poet Osip Mandelstam, before his arrest (1938) and death. She says little on Yezhov, apart from an interesting meeting in 1930.

Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (Revised and expanded edition edited and translated by George Shriver), Columbia University Press, New York, 1989; pp. 358-361. [Medvedev]
Though not officially approved, Medvedev was allowed to conduct research in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s, gathering statements from many people (including senior party officials) who would no longer be around in the "Glasnost'" 1990s.

Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin (translated by H.T. Willets), Doubleday (Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.), 1540 Broadway New York NY 10036, 1996; pp. 430-432. [Radzinsky]

Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin; 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror; Mehring Books Inc., 25900 Greenfield Road, Oak Park MI 48237; 1998. [Rogovin]
Rogovin is an unrepentant follower of L.D. Trotsky, lawfully-convicted (in absentia) arch-agent of fascism, poisoner and murderer of Soviet workers, repeatedly condemned by 99.97% of all eligible Soviet voters. Like Trotsky before him, Rogovin pretends to sympathize with the Socialist revolution in Russia, even denouncing the anti-Soviet propaganda of Conquest et al., but that is nothing more than a sham to divide the working-class movement. Concerned internationalists should write to the capitalists of Mehring Books Inc to express their indignation at the forum provided to this hyena.

Tsitriniak, Grigorii. "Yezhov’s Execution." Russian Law and Politics, Winter 1992-3, 31:46.
Russian text © 1992 by "Literaturnaia Gazeta." "Rasstrel'noe delo Ezhova: Shtrikhi k portretu palacha," "Literaturnaia Gazeta," 1992, no. 7 (February 12), p.15.
Tragically, the provocateur and British spy L.P. Beriya contrived to alienate the trust of the Great Leader and Teacher for Nikolai Ivanovich. This article, though written from an ideologically deficient point of view, nevertheless is one of the best sources currently available of original documents. [Having gotten Nikolai Ivanovich out of the way, Beriya would later poison the Brilliant Genius of Humanity and laugh over His deathbed.]




Some indirect (background) material

Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine," Oxford University Press, New York, 1986. ["Harvest"]
Indirect relevance only. Discusses Stalin's principal crime in 1929-33.

Victor A. Kravchenko (with Eugene Lyons), I Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official, Garden City Publishing Co (Charles Scribners Sons), Garden City NY, 1946 (Reprinted in 1988, it is currently available from Transaction Publishers). [Kravchenko]
Excellent first-hand account of Collectivization (pp. 91-131) by a low-ranking official, and of Stalinist purges (pp. 132-147, 206-277) by a low-to-mid-ranking target.
The pro-Stalin Left denounced and threatened defector Kravchenko when this book came out in 1946, but every major point in dispute would later be shown to be true.