Nikolai Yezhov

NKVD director under Joseph Stalin (1895-1940)

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Lived 1895–1940, aged 45

Wikipedia
53 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1895–1940
Aged 45
Awards
4
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

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.

Biography

About

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.

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