Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow Trials. His death led to an investigation that revealed a network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of Stalin's rivals. [63], On the first day of trial, Krestinsky caused a sensation when he repudiated his written confession and pleaded not guilty to all the charges. At least 100,000 of them were arrested in the course of the Great Terror. 8 January] 1891 - 2 February 1940) was a Soviet politician and member of the Cheka and OGPU.He was a key figure in the Red Terror, the Great Purge and dekulakization that saw millions of people executed and deported.. Yevdokimov himself was arrested on 9 November 1938 and executed . Nikolai Yezhov is the 867th most popular politician (down from 761st in 2019), the 101st most popular biography from Russia (down from 93rd in 2019) and the 39th most popular Russian Politician. During the purges, many of Stalins enemies simply vanished from their homes. [158], Two major lines of interpretation have emerged among historians. And since Stalin knew the value of photographs in both the historical record and his use of mass media to influence the Soviet Union, they often disappeared from photos, too. However, by the early 1930s, party officials began losing faith in his leadership following the human cost of the first five-year plan and the collectivization of agriculture. In 1934, Stalin used the murder of Sergey Kirov as a pretext to launch the Great Purge, in which about a million people perished (see Number of people executed). One such erasure was Nikola Yezhov, a secret police official who oversaw Stalin's purges. [22], In 1937 and 1938 alone, at least 1.3 million were arrested and 681,692 were shot for 'crimes against the state'. For roughly two years, Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was the second most powerful man in the Soviet Union. He was promptly shot on 16 July 1937. Stalin was already unhappy with Yagoda's services, mostly due to mismanagement of Kirov's assassination and his failure to fabricate "proofs" of ties between Kamenev and Zinoviev and the Okhrana (the tsarist security organization). [94], Eventually almost all of the Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution, or in Lenin's Soviet government, were executed. [citation needed] No other crime of the Stalin years so captivated Western intellectuals as the trial and execution of Bukharin, who was a Marxist theorist of international standing. [102], Victims of the terror included American immigrants to the Soviet Union who had emigrated at the height of the Great Depression to find work. She was photographed before her execution, as was normal for condemned prisoners. Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? should be abandoned, it failed to fully rehabilitate the victims of the three Moscow trials, although the final report does contain an admission that the accusations have not been proven during the trials and "evidence" had been produced by lies, blackmail, and "use of physical influence". Even citizens had to get in on the act. The decree signaled the end of massive Soviet purges. AndKim Jong-Un apparentlyuses Photoshop to make his ears look smaller. "Social Disorder, Mass Repression and the NKVD During the 1930s." Menhzinsky death was followed one day later by death of Max Peshkov, the son of Maxim Gorky, the doyen of Soviet literature. Those who perished during the Great Purge include: The investigators began to use force on me, a sick 65-year-old man. [17] According to Arkady Vaksberg and other researchers, Yagoda poisoned Maxim Gorky and his son on the orders from Joseph Stalin.[18]. Yezhov also conducted a thorough purge of the security organs, both NKVD and GRU, removing and executing not only many officials who had been appointed by his predecessors Yagoda and Menzhinsky, but even his own appointees as well. 1895; pp. [16], He became People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (head of the NKVD) and a member of the Central Committee on 26 September 1936, following the dismissal of Genrikh Yagoda. "Whenever Gorky met Stalin or other members of the Politburo, Yagoda would visit Kryuchkov's flat afterward, demanding a full account of what had been said. 00447 decreed 10,000 executions for this contingent, but at least three times more were shot in the course of the secret mass operation, the majority in MarchApril 1938. Yezhov ordered the NKVD to sprinkle mercury on the curtains of his office so that the physical evidence could be collected and used to support the charge that Yagoda was a German spy, sent to assassinate Yezhov and Stalin with poison and restore capitalism. Retouchers removed him from the photo, necessitating the re-creation of Kodzhayev's suit. For political purges in general, see, "Ex-kulaks" and other "anti-Soviet elements", James Harris, "Encircled by Enemies: Stalin's Perceptions of the Capitalist World, 19181941,", This information was published first in 1990 in a. Goldman, W. (2005). How tall is Yezhov? Despite the Great Purge being over, the atmosphere of mistrust and widespread surveillance continued for decades after. Other victims were nobility and political and academic figures, along with some ordinary workers and herders. The Soviet press portrayed the country as threatened from within by fascist spies. [78], The Polish Operation of the NKVD served as a model for a series of similar NKVD secret decrees targeting a number of the Soviet Union's diaspora nationalities: the Finnish, Latvian, Estonian, Bulgarian, Afghan, Iranian, Greek, and Chinese. Like many Soviet NKVD officers who conducted political repression, Yagoda himself ultimately became a victim of the Purge. [143] Many people at the time, and also a few subsequent commentators, surmised that the Great Purge wasn't started by Stalin's initiative, so the idea got about that the process was entirely out of control once it had begun. Over the following months, Beria (with Stalin's approval) began to usurp Yezhov's governance of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs. It occurred from August 1936 to March 1938. Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (Russian: , tr. The Dewey Commission later published its findings in a 422-page book titled Not Guilty. His reign is sometimes known as the "Yezhovschina" (or "Yezhovshchina", Russian: , the "Yezhov era"). He was careful not to sign anything on this matter and was equally insistent on no documentation. By the "third organization," he meant the last remaining former opposition group called the Rightists, led by Bukharin, whom he implicated by saying: I feel guilty of one thing more: even after admitting my guilt and exposing the organisation, I stubbornly refused to give evidence about Bukharin. Nikolai Yezhov, pictured right of Stalin, was later removed from this photograph at the Moscow Canal. ", 1937, passage of Article 58-14 about "counter-revolutionary sabotage.". [44]. In many cases those arrested were forced to sign blank pages which were later filled in with a fabricated confession by the interrogators. Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, IPA: [nkaj jof]; May 1, 1895 - February 4, 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the most active period of the Great Purge. That while confessions are necessarily entitled to the most serious consideration, the confessions themselves contain such inherent improbabilities as to convince the Commission that they do not represent the truth, irrespective of any means used to obtain them. After the trial, Stalin not only broke his promise to spare the defendants, he had most of their relatives arrested and shot. We strive for accuracy and fairness. 2. "[6], Though Yagoda appears to have known Joseph Stalin since 1918, when they were both stationed in Tsaritsyn during the civil war, "he was never Stalin's man". Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. As photo doctoring became more and more common in the USSRs propaganda effort, it also became a way to evade Stalins wrath. Nikolai Yezhov was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge. 00447 also targeted "the most vicious and stubborn anti-Soviet elements in camps", they were all "to be put into the first category"that is, shot. He worked as a musician, railroad switchman, forest warden, head of a brothel, and as a housepainting contractor employing a couple of hired workers. [33][34], On 2 February 1940, Yezhov was tried by the Military Collegium, chaired by Soviet judge Vasiliy Ulrikh, behind closed doors. But as Stalin shows, manipulating photos isnt always about the size of ones ears. [31] In 1988, on the 50th anniversary of the trial, the Soviet authorities belatedly cleared all of the other 20 defendants of any criminal offence, admitting that the entire trial was built on false confessions. Beria had managed to survive the Great Purge and the "Yezhovshchina" during the years 19361938, even though he had almost become one of its victims. Soviet authorities increased repression against the kulaks, who were wealthy peasants that owned farmland in a policy called dekulakization. [120], In some cases, high military command arrested under Yezhov were later executed under Beria. According to an October 1993 study published in The American Historical Review, much of the Great Purge was directed against the widespread banditry and criminal activity which was occurring in the Soviet Union at the time. He soon had to be dragged out of the room, struggling with the guards and screaming. That Trotsky never instructed any of the accused or witnesses in the Moscow trials to enter into agreements with foreign powers against the Soviet Union [and] that Trotsky never recommended, plotted, or attempted the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. One observer noted that after disproving several charges against him, Bukharin "proceeded to demolish or rather showed he could very easily demolish the whole case. "[129], Evidence and the results of research began to appear after Stalin's death. We are launching a major attack on the Enemy; let there be no resentment if we bump someone with an elbow. 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Stalin used alargegroup of photo retouchers to cut his enemies out of supposedly documentary photographs. Akulov was dismissed and Yagoda reinstated in October 1932, After Yagoda's fall, one of his former colleagues confessed: "We met Akulov with violent hostility the entire party organisation in the OGPU was devoted to sabotaging Akulov. 15 i lack expertise, but i think FeigenbErg is correct spelling (FeigenbUrg on this wp page) 1 comment. [7] When Stalin ordered that the Soviet Union's entire rural population were to be forced onto collective farms, Yagoda is reputed to have sympathised with Bukharin and Rykov, his opponents on the right of the communist party. The NKVD began targeting certain ethnic minorities such as the Volga Germans, who were subjected to forced deportation and extreme repression. Ezhov interrogation 04.30.39. In March 1937, Yagoda was arrested on Stalin's orders. Inside of Joseph's Stalin's Soviet Union, the NKVD were a notorious secret police who were responsible for the executions and deaths of hundreds of thousands. [145] Wheatcroft elaborates: Stalin undoubtedly caused many innocent people to be executed, but it seems likely that he thought many of them guilty of crimes against the state and felt that the execution of others would act as a deterrent to the guilty. [90], At first, it was thought 2550% of Red Army officers had been purged; the true figure is now known to be in the area of 3.77.7%. She has been a regular contributor to History.com since 2017. "Who plotted against whom? [83][84][85][86] Norman Naimark called Stalin's policy towards Poles in the 1930s "genocidal;"[86] however he doesn't consider the Great Purge entirely genocidal because it also targeted political opponents. The answers required a lot more digging, but it gradually became clearer that the violence of the late 1930s was driven by fear. In November 1930, he was appointed to the Head of several departments of the Communist Party: department of special affairs, department of personnel and department of industry. He joined the Bolsheviks on 5 May 1917, in Vitebsk, six months before the October Revolution. However, Georgian NKVD chief Sergei Goglidze warned Beria, who immediately flew to Moscow to see Stalin personally. In January 1934, at the 17th party Congress, he became a full member of the Central Committee, and then, in February, he succeeded Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich in the key post of chairman of the party Control Commission. Historians debate the causes of the purge, such as Stalin's paranoia, or his desire to remove dissenters from the Communist Party or to consolidate his authority. Stalin suspected that Yezhov was involved in the disappearance and told Beria, not Yezhov, that Uspensky must be caught (he was arrested on 14 April 1939). Such was the atmosphere of fear that families of those arrested and condemned were compelled to destroy even the image of their loved ones in their own personal records,writes biographer Helen Rappaport. The following categories appear to have been on index-cards, catalogues of suspects assembled over the years by the NKVD and were systematically tracked down: "ex-kulaks" previously deported to "special settlements" in inhospitable parts of the country (Siberia, the Urals, Kazakhstan, and the Far North), former tsarist civil servants, former officers of the White Army, participants in peasant rebellions, members of the clergy, persons deprived of voting rights, former members of non-Bolshevik parties, ordinary criminals, like thieves, known to the police and various other "socially harmful elements". He was demoted from the directorship of the NKVD in favor of Nikolai Yezhov in 1936 and arrested in 1937. "[32], In his confession, Yezhov admitted to the standard litany of state crimes necessary to mark him as an "enemy of the people" prior to execution, including "wrecking", official incompetence, theft of government funds, and treasonous collaboration with German spies and saboteurs. Other methods of dispatching victims were used on an experimental basis. One sucherasure was Nikola Yezhov, a secret police official who oversaw Stalins purges. Others were executed in public after show trials. Head of the secret police from 1937 to 1938, N.I. Thirty percent of officers purged in 19371939 were allowed to return to service. The Little Politbureau had penetrated the Yenukidze-Sheboldayev and the Yagoda-Zelinsky conspiracies and broken through the opposition's links within the central institutions of the political police.[24]. 2003. "The Purge of the Red Army and the Soviet Mass Operations, 193738. 24 1939 . were also dealt with in a summary way. [15] However Menzhinsky was ill for several years before he died and this may have been a false testimony during the Stalinist purges. [20] As one Soviet official put it, "The Boss forgets nothing."[21]. Death sentences were immediately enforceable. The Meteorological Office was violently purged as early as 1933 for failing to predict weather harmful to the crops. [19] On 25 September 1936, Stalin sent a telegram (co-signed by Andrei Zhdanov) to the members of the Politburo. [16] Eventually, the purges were expanded to the Red Army and military high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military. [66], Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured, but it is now known[neutrality is disputed] that his interrogators were given the order "beating permitted", and were under great pressure to extract confession out of the "star" defendant. [10] Initially, Stalin's leadership was widely accepted; his main political adversary Trotsky was forced into exile in 1929, and the doctrine of "socialism in one country" became enshrined party policy. When you chop wood, chips fly. Forged documents and misinformation spread by Nazi Germany in order to incriminate innocent Soviet citizens also contributed to this perception. [91], The purge of the army was claimed to be supported by German-forged documents (said to have been correspondence between Marshal Tukhachevsky and members of the German high command). [118], Michael Parrish argues that while the Great Terror ended in 1938, a lesser terror continued in the 1940s. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Following the Civil War and reconstruction of the Soviet economy in the late 1920s, veteran Bolsheviks no longer thought necessary the "temporary" wartime dictatorship, which had passed from Lenin to Stalin. During the Russian Civil War (19171922), he fought in the Red Army. Tabidze's lifelong friend and fellow poet. During the Great Purge, acting on the orders from Stalin, he had accomplished liquidation of Old Bolsheviks and other potentially "disloyal elements" or "fifth columnists" within the Soviet military and government prior to the onset of war with Germany. The purges themselves were largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), the secret police of the USSR. [37], On 4 February 1940, Yezhov was shot by future KGB chairman Ivan Serov (or by Vasily Blokhin, in the presence of N. P. Afanasev, according to one book source[38]) in the basement of a small NKVD station on Varsonofevskii Lane (Varsonofyevskiy pereulok) in Moscow. In the late 1980s, with the formation of the Memorial Society and similar organisations across the Soviet Union at a time of Gorbachev's glasnost ("openness and transparency") it became possible not only to speak about the Great Terror but to begin locating the killing grounds of 19371938 and identifying those who lay buried there. As early as 8 September, Mikhail Frinovsky, Yezhov's first deputy, was relocated from under his command into the Navy. Yezhov was posthumously removed from pictures, such as here where he stood next to Joseph Stalin. [3], According to Robert Conquest, a practice of falsification for lowering the execution numbers was disguising executions with the sentence "ten years without the right of correspondence" which almost always meant execution. Stalin's opponents inside the Communist Party chided him as undemocratic and lax on bureaucratic corruption.[36]. When these ten-year periods elapsed in 19471948 but the arrested did not appear, the relatives asked MGB about their fate again and this time were told that the arrested died in imprisonment.