How "Bloody Dwarf" Nikolai Yezhov borrowed ideas from Nazi Germany and organized a torture conveyor

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

"A talented performer" who cannot stop "- this is how colleagues described Nikolai Yezhov, even before he became the organizer of the repressions of 1937-1938. The future proved the correctness of these words: even before his death, the former People's Commissar of Security of the USSR regretted that he had not finished the "purge". An active participant in the "Great Terror" did not understand that he was not the arbiter of destinies, but only an instrument designed to fulfill someone else's will.

How the son of a Petersburg foundry worker became People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR

There are very few reliable biographical data about the childhood and youth of Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov. It is only known that he was born on April 19 (May 1), 1895 in a simple family, which had, in addition to Kolya, one more son and daughter. As a child, the future People's Commissar studied at a comprehensive school, but graduated from only three classes. Despite this, Nikolai knew the letter perfectly well and practically did not make spelling or punctuation errors in the letter.

As a teenager, Yezhov studied tailoring, worked as a locksmith apprentice at the Putilov factory, and at the age of 20 volunteered for the front. True, he did not stay there long. After a month in an infantry regiment, Nikolai, who fell ill with a cold, was slightly wounded, after which he was sent to the rear. A subsequent attempt to return to the active army was unsuccessful - due to his small stature (151 cm), the young man was declared unfit for combat service. In the future, his stay in the army was limited at first to guards and outfits, and at the end of 1916, thanks to his literacy, the soldier Yezhov became a rear clerk.

According to some sources, Yezhov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in May or March 1917, according to others - in August of the same year. In the spring of 1919 he was drafted into the Red Army, where in the fall Nikolai received the rank of commissar and was responsible for political and educational work in a radio school. In the period from 1922 to 1926, he managed to serve as the executive secretary of the Mari regional committee of the RCP (b) and a little later the Semipalatinsk provincial committee of the RCP (b); head of the organizational department in the Kyrgyz regional committee of the CPSU (b); Deputy Executive Secretary at the Kazak Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks; instructor of the Organizational Distribution Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) in Moscow.

The acquaintance of 35-year-old Nikolai with Stalin happened in November 1930, and 6 years later (in September 1936) Yezhov received the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, which had previously belonged to Henrikh Yagoda.

Mass terror and "Yezhovshchina", or how "all the poisonous snakes Yezhov spied on and smoked reptiles from their holes and dens"

Period 1936-1938 was marked by three high-profile trials of major party functionaries who in the 1920s were related to the right opposition or Trotskyists. They were accused of having links with foreign intelligence, the purpose of which was to assassinate Stalin, destroy the Soviet Union and restore the capitalist system.

The first trial, called the “trial of sixteen,” took place in August 1936, when Yagoda was still the People's Commissar. Among the accused at the trial were Kamenev and Zinoviev: all the participants were charged with organizing the murder of Kirov and preparing an attempt on Stalin's life. The second, known as the "Seventeen Trial," took place in the first month of the winter of 1937. Out of 17 people, among whom were Y. Pyatakov, K. Radek, G. Sokolnikov, four were sentenced to long imprisonment, 13 accused were sentenced to death.

At the third trial in March 1938, N. Bukharin appeared before the court, who became the main accused, as well as N. Krestinsky, H. Rakovsky, who organized the first trial G. Yagoda, the former chairman of the Council of People's Commissars A. Rykov and Soviet doctors L. Levin, D. Pletnev, I. Kazakov. Before the start of the third trial, Yezhov's ranks of the Red Army were also “purged” - in June 1937, a group of high-ranking officers was arrested on the fabricated case of the “Anti-Soviet Trotskyist military organization”. After the verdict, the following were put on the execution list: the heroes of the Civil War M. Tukhachevsky, I. Yakir, V. Primakov, as well as famous military leaders I. Uborevich, V. Putna, R. Eideman, B. Feldman, A. Kork.

A year later, V. Blucher, J. Alksnis, N. Kashirin, E. Goryachev, E. Kovtyukh and many others became victims of the repressions of the "bloody dwarf" - a total of 138 military men from the highest commanding staff of the Red Army. There were also changes in the personnel of the NKVD - as a result of the "purge" all the founders of the Cheka were physically destroyed, most of whom were party members with pre-revolutionary experience.

What methods did Yezhov borrow from Nazi Germany and how he organized the torture conveyor

There is a version that, having traveled to Germany in 1936 for treatment, Yezhov took over from there the practice of torturing those under investigation. However, this version is unlikely to correspond to reality: there were already quite tense relations between the countries at that time and it is difficult to believe that the highest official of the USSR was admitted to the Gestapo to get acquainted with the technologies of torturing people.

Nevertheless, the investigation received the go-ahead from the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs to extract confessions from the accused with the help of beatings and self-mutilation. During the period of the "Great Terror", real torture conveyors were organized with beating with rubber truncheons and sandbags, with red-hot punishment cells, barrels of ice water, needles under the nails and other tortures that could be used, as it seemed, only among the Nazis.

Opal and Yezhov's "cleanup"

The first call about imminent disgrace was the appointment of Yezhov in April 1938 concurrently to the post of People's Commissar of Water Transport. Such a "trust" load at that time did not bode well. After 5 months, L. Beria took the post of chief of the Main Directorate of State Security and first deputy Yezhov, to whom the actual power of the People's Commissariat gradually began to pass.

At the end of November 1938, Yezhov was removed from his post, but left as chairman of the Party Control Commission and secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). On April 9, 1939, the former General Commissioner of Security was relieved of his duties as head of the People's Commissariat for Water Transport, and the next day Yezhov was arrested. The investigation into the case in which he was accused of preparing a coup d'etat lasted almost 10 months. On February 3, 1940, an active organizer of large-scale repressions was sentenced to death; the fourth of February - carried out the sentence. After the death of Nikolai Yezhov, Stalin remarked not without slyness: “We shot him because he killed many innocent people. It was a decomposed person."

Yezhov's replacement, Beria, was no less formidable executioner. There is even a large list of famous Soviet people who suffered from the manifestations of the people's commissar's sympathy.