Jansen, Rosja ZSRR
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Illustrations
N. I. Ezhov, Vitebsk, 1916
4
Radio technicians leaving for the front, Kazan’, June 1920,
with Ezhov in the middle of the front row
7
Dimitrov, Ezhov, and Manuil’skii at the Seventh Comintern
Congress, summer 1935
39
Party leaders on top of the Lenin Mausoleum, 1 May 1936
43
Ezhov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, and Stalin on their way to a
gymnastic parade in Red Square, July 1936
47
Voroshilov, Molotov, Stalin, and Ezhov visiting the Moscow-
Volga canal, Iakhroma, 22 April 1937
65
Ezhov, Kalinin, and Stalin leaving the Lenin Mausoleum,
1 May 1937
71
Kalinin handing the Lenin order to Ezhov, 27 July 1937
114
‘‘Ezhov’s hedgehog gauntlets of steel’’: poster by Boris
Efimov, 1937
115
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viii
Illustrations
Ezhov
en famille,
1936
122
USSR Supreme Soviet, first session, January 1938
125
Ezhov with Stalin and others, on their way to Red Square,
1 May 1938
140
Shkiriatov, Ezhov, and Frinovskii on their way to Red Square,
1 May 1938
141
Party leaders on top of the Lenin Mausoleum viewing a
gymnastic parade, 24 July 1938
147
Two photographs of the Party leaders on top of the Lenin
Mausoleum, 7 November 1938
162
Before the fall: Ezhov on top of the Lenin Mausoleum,
1 May 1938
196
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Preface
I don’t know of any more ideal functionary than Ezhov. After
charging him with a task, you don’t have to check up on him:
he will accomplish the mission. He has only one, indeed essen-
tial, shortcoming—he does not know where to stop.
—I. M. Moskvin, 1936–37
If during this operation an extra thousand people will be shot,
that is not such a big deal.
—N. I. Ezhov, July 1937
Better too far than not far enough.
—N. I. Ezhov, October 1937
Recent literature on the Stalinist period of Soviet history has dwelt
heavily on the significance and scope of the terror, and historians
are still much divided on both facts and interpretation, but there
is little difference of opinion on the central role of what is now
generally called the Great Terror of 1937–38. In the course of
some fifteen months, approximately 1.5 million people were ar-
rested; almost half of them were executed. The main executor of
this gigantic operation was Stalin’s state security chief of those
years, Nikolai Ezhov.
Until quite recently, very little was known about this man, and
what was known was to a large extent the product of invention.
It was hard to realize that Ezhov had been one of the secret police
chiefs praised most by Soviet propaganda. The extremely short
lived Ezhov cultus of the years 1937–38 was indeed unprece-
dented. During this period Stalin was very favorably disposed
toward Ezhov; according to Khrushchev, he had a pet name for
The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) has contributed
to the realization of this book with a grant to the authors.
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x
Preface
him:
ezhevichka,
‘‘little bramble.’’
1
Stalin put his boundless trust
in Ezhov. He was personally allowed to impose death sentences in
the so-called ‘‘national operations,’’ whereas the responsibility to
impose death sentences in the operation with respect to order No.
00447 was passed on to an even lower level, that is, the regional
NKVD chiefs. Since the Red Terror years 1918–21, neither before
nor later in Soviet history have there been similar examples. Dur-
ing the 1920s and 1930s all death sentences were confirmed at the
highest level, that is, by the Politburo. Even Ezhov’s predecessors
Menzhinskii and Iagoda, who had an OGPU Board issuing death
sentences, officially needed prior permission by the Politburo. So
from early 1937 until November 1938 Ezhov was not only the
troubadour but the symbol of the new Soviet terror. His name is
strongly linked to the Great Terror.
His short period of greatness, amounting to only one and a
half years, was followed by a sudden complete, and well enforced,
oblivion. Stalin forbade mention even of his name—not, perhaps,
simply because it may have called up unpleasant memories, but
because it annoyed him. For example, in 1949 in a conversation
with Vulko Chervenkov and other Bulgarian leaders, when ex-
plaining how to organize the work of their national Department
of the Interior, Stalin referred to the Soviet experience and in that
connection also mentioned the name of Iagoda; but he kept silent
about Ezhov.
2
According to the aircraft designer A. Iakovlev,
some months after his fall Stalin recalled his former favorite with
the words: ‘‘Ezhov was a scoundrel. He ruined our best cadres.
He had morally degenerated.’’
3
Stalin seemed to put the burden
of guilt for the terror of 1937–38 on the executors.
The historian analyzing the life and activity of Ezhov is con-
fronted by a great deal of vagueness and inconsistencies. This is
partly a result of the shortcomings of his official biography, pub-
lished in the 1930s, which, as usual with a ‘‘model’’ biography of
a Kremlin leader, omitted much and falsified when convenient, all
in order to present an exemplary revolutionary career. Biographi-
cal facts were adjusted to the accepted clich´; all that was consid-
ered dubious or superfluous was cut out, or altered. After Ezhov’s
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Preface
xi
fall in the late 1930s, the situation was turned upside down: he
was accused of having been a spy, a drunkard, a ‘‘pederast,’’ the
murderer of his wife. Nothing good remained. Stalin’s famous
Short Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party
(Bolsheviks)
, which began appearing in installments in
Pravda
in
September 1938, mentions Ezhov just twice—once in connection
with his role during the civil war and again in the verification of
Party documents campaign of the mid-1930s.
4
The second edition
omits him altogether.
5
From the late 1930s on, Party censorship
banned his works.
6
Since then, he has mainly been described in
very negative terms. During the de-Stalinization campaign of the
1950s, the term
ezhovshchina
was even invented as a synonym for
the bloody purges of 1936–38, as if it had all been Ezhov’s work.
In the 1990s, the doors of the former Soviet archives were set
ajar. New information on Ezhov’s life and work began to appear.
The authors of the present biography have used the following
hitherto unpublished information to fill the gaps: materials from
Ezhov’s personal file (
lichnoe delo
) as nomenklatura functionary
of the Party Central Committee apparatus at the Tsentr khrane-
niia sovremennoi dokumentatsii (TsKhSD,* the former archive of
the General Department of the CPSU Central Committee); Ezhov’s
papers (
fond
57) in the Arkhiv Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii
(APRF, the former Politburo archive), later transferred (as
fond
671) to the Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov
noveishei istorii, or RTsKhIDNI
†
(the former Central Party Archive,
where as yet they have not been completely declassified and are only
sparsely accessible to researchers; most of these materials have been
studied by the authors when they were still in the Presidential Ar-
chive, as a consequence of which in the notes they refer to this
archive); other documents from the APRF and the RTsKhIDNI;
Ezhov’s interrogation and other documents from the Tsentral’nyi
arkhiv Federal’noi sluzhby bezopasnosti (TsA FSB, the former
*Since 1999 renamed Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii, or
RGANI.
†
Since 1999 renamed Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi
istorii, or RGASPI.
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