Nikolai Yezhov

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NKVD director under Joseph Stalin (1895-1940)

PoliticiansLived 1895 to 1940 · aged 44

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Fame59.4

MomentumNot measured

Languages31

Peak2000s

In century#1,786

He ran the Soviet secret police at the apex of the Great Purge, signing off on mass arrests, torture, and executions from 1936 to 1938. Then Stalin turned the machine on him.

Politicians Politician Politics 20th Century

Also inDeutsch

Photos 8

Ezhov NI

19360501-military parade moscov tribune stalin tukhachevsky gamarnik voroshilov et al

Иосиф Сталин на выборах (1937)

Bitte Quotenerhöhung NKWD-Befehl 00447 aus Gebiet Irkutsk

Nikolai Yezhov conferring with Stalin19371220

Nikolay Yezhov

Soviet censorship with Stalin

Awards 4

1938Jubilee Medal "XX Years of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army"

1937Order of Lenin

Order of the Red Banner

Honorary Worker of the VChK-GPU (XV)

In their orbit 2

SpouseAntonina Titova

SpouseYevgenia Ezhova

Connected to Nikolai 4

Lavrentiy BeriaAlso won Honorary Worker of the VChK-GPU (XV)

Genrikh YagodaAlso won Honorary Worker of the VChK-GPU (XV)

Viktor AbakumovAlso won Honorary Worker of the VChK-GPU (XV)

Vasili BlokhinAlso won Honorary Worker of the VChK-GPU (XV)

Politicians born in the 1890s 2

Sobhuza II60.0

Moshe Sharett59.3

About this person

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was born 1 May 1895 and rose to head the NKVD in 1936, just as Stalin's Great Purge gathered force. For two years he organized the apparatus of mass terror: arrests by quota, forced confessions, executions. By 1938 Stalin had soured on him. Yezhov was removed, then arrested, and under interrogation confessed to anti-Soviet activity and to making "unfounded arrests" during the very campaign he had orchestrated. He was executed 4 February 1940, one of the officials blamed for the purge's excesses after the fact.