Education, History
Ezhov Nikolay: biography and photos
As is known from history, the majority of those who sent noblemen and royalty to the guillotine in France during the Great Terror in the 18th century, subsequently themselves were executed. There was even a winged phrase, voiced by Justice Minister Danton, which he said before he was beheaded: "The revolution devours its children."
History repeated itself during the years of Stalinist terror, when, with one stroke of a pen, the executioner of yesterday could be on the same prison bunks or be shot without trial and investigation, like those he himself sent to his death.
A striking example of this is Nikolai Yezhov, the Commissar for Internal Affairs of the USSR. The reliability of many pages of his biography is questioned by historians, for there are many dark spots in it.
Parents
According to the official version, Yezhov Nikolai was born in 1895 in St. Petersburg, in a working family.
At the same time, there is an opinion that the father of the People's Commissar was Ivan Yezhov, who was born with. Volkhonshchino (Tula Province) and served an urgent service in Lithuania. There he met a local girl, who soon married, deciding not to return to his homeland. After demobilization, the Yezhov family moved to the Suvalka province, and Ivan got a job at the police.
Childhood
At the time of his birth, his parents, most likely, lived in one of the villages of Mariampol county (now the territory of Lithuania). Three years later the father of the boy was appointed as a zemstvo guard of the district township. This circumstance was the reason that the family moved to Mariampol, where Kolya was disaccustomed to 3 years in the primary school.
Considering his son sufficiently educated, in 1906 his parents sent him to a relative in St. Petersburg, where he was to master a tailor's trade.
Youth
Although in the biography of Nikolai Ezhov it is stated that until 1911 he worked at Putilov Plant as a pupil of a locksmith. However, archival documents do not confirm this. It is known only that in 1913 the young man returned to his parents in the Suvalkskaya province, and then wandered in search of work. At the same time, he lived for some time in Tilsit (Germany).
In the summer of 1915, Yezhov Nikolai volunteered for the army. After training in the 76th Infantry Battalion, he was sent to the North-Western Front.
Two months later, after suffering a serious illness and slight injury, he was sent to the rear, and in the early summer of 1916 Nikolai Yezhov, whose growth was only 1 m 51 cm, was found unfit for military service. For this reason, he was sent to the rear workshop in Vitebsk, where he went to sentries and dresses, and soon, as the most literate of the soldiers, was appointed clerk.
In the autumn of 1917, Yezhov Nikolai got into the hospital, and after returning to his unit only at the beginning of 1918, he was dismissed for 6 months by illness. He again went to his parents, who at that time lived in the Tver province. From August of the same year, Yezhov began working at a glass factory in Vyshny Volochok.
The beginning of the party career
In the questionnaire filled in by Yezhov himself in the early 1920s, he indicated that he had joined the RSDLP in May 1917. However, after a while he began to argue that he did it back in March 1917. At the same time, according to some members of the Vitebsk city organization of the RSDLP, Yezhov joined the ranks only on August 3.
In April 1919, he was drafted into the Red Army and sent to the radio base in Saratov. There he first served as a private, and then a copyist under the command. In October of the same year, Yezhov Nikolay took the position of commissioner of the base, where radio specialists were trained, and in the spring of 1921 he was appointed commissar of the base and was elected deputy head of the agitpropagandist department of the Tatar regional committee of the RCP.
On the party work in the capital
In July 1921, Ezhov Nikolai registered a marriage with A. Titova. Shortly after the wedding, the newlywed went to Moscow and made a transfer there and her husband.
In the capital Yezhov began to rapidly advance in the service. In particular, in a few months he was sent to the Mari Regional Committee of the Party as a responsible secretary.
Further, he held the following party posts:
- Executive secretary of the Semipalatinsk Gubernia Committee;
- Head of the Kyrgyz regional committee;
- Deputy executive secretary of the Kazak regional committee;
- Instructor of the department of the Central Committee.
According to the management, Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich was an ideal performer, but had a significant drawback - he did not know how to stop, even in situations where nothing can be done.
After working in the Central Committee until 1929, he served for 12 months as deputy commissar of agriculture of the USSR, and then returned to the organizational unit for the post of director.
"Cleaning"
Orgraspredotdelom Nikolai Ezhov was in charge until 1934. At the same time he was included in the Central Commission of the CPSU, which was to carry out the "purge" of the party, and from February 1935 he was elected chairman of the CCP and secretary of the Central Committee.
From 1934 to 1935, Yezhov, on behalf of Stalin, headed the commission for the Kremlin case and the investigation of the murder of Kirov. It was he who linked them to the activities of Zinoviev, Trotsky and Kamenev, actually entering into a conspiracy with Agranov against the chief of the last People's Commissar of the NKVD Yagoda.
New appointment
In September 1936, J. Stalin and A. Zhdanov, who were at that time on vacation, sent a cipher telegram to the capital addressed to Molotov, Kaganovich and the other members of the Politburo of the Central Committee. In it they demanded to appoint Yezhov to the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, leaving Agranov as his deputy.
Of course, the order was executed immediately, and already in early October 1936, Nikolai Yezhov signed the first order on his department to take office.
Yezhov Nikolai - People's Commissar for Internal Affairs
Like G. Yagoda, he was subordinated to the state security bodies and the police, as well as auxiliary services, for example, the fire department and highways.
In his new post, Nikolai Yezhov dealt with the organization of repressions against persons suspected of spying or anti-Soviet activities, "cleansing" in the party, mass arrests, expulsions on social, national and organizational grounds.
In particular, after in March 1937 the Plenum of the Central Committee instructed him to take care of the establishment of order in the NKVD organs, 2,273 employees of this department were arrested. In addition, it was under Yezhov that orders were sent down to the NKVD organs on the ground, indicating the number of unreliable citizens who were to be arrested, shot, deported or imprisoned and imprisoned.
For these "feats" Yezhov awarded the Order of Lenin. Also, to his credit, it is possible to attribute the destruction of the old guard of the revolutionaries, who knew the unsightly details of the biographies of many of the first persons of the state.
On April 8, 1938 Yezhov was appointed concurrently People's Commissar of Water Transport, and a few months later, the posts of First Deputy for the NKVD and Head of the Main Directorate of State Security were taken by Lavrenty Beria.
Opal
In November 1938, the Politburo KP discussed the denunciation of Nikolai Yezhov, which was signed by the head of the Ivanovo department of the NKVD. A few days later, the People's Commissar submitted a petition for resignation, in which he acknowledged his responsibility for the wrecking activities of the "enemies" who, through his inadvertence, had infiltrated the prosecutor's office and the NKVD.
Anticipating his imminent arrest, in a letter to the leader of the peoples, he asked not to touch his "seventy-year old mother" and concluded his message with the words that he "pogromed the enemies with great".
In December 1938, Izvestia and Pravda published a report that Yezhov, according to his request, was relieved of the duties of the head of the NKVD, but retained the post of People's Commissar for Water Transport. His successor was Lavrenty Beria, who began his work in a new position with the arrests of people close to Yezhov in the NKVD, the courts and the prosecutor's office.
On the day of the 15th anniversary of Lenin's death, N. Yezhov attended the most important event of state significance - a solemn meeting devoted to this sad anniversary. But then an event followed, which directly indicated that more than before, clouds of anger of the leader of the peoples were gathering over him-he was not elected as a delegate to the XVIII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party.
Arrest
In April 1939, Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich, whose biography until this moment was the story of the incredible career rise of a man who barely graduated from primary school, was taken into custody. The arrest took place in the office of Malenkov, with the participation of Beria, who was appointed to conduct an investigation into his case. From there he was sent to the Sukhanov special prison of the NKVD of the USSR.
After 2 weeks Yezhov wrote a note in which he admitted that he was a homosexual. Subsequently, she was used as evidence that he committed unnatural acts of a sexual nature for selfish and anti-Soviet purposes.
However, the main thing that was blamed on him was the preparation of a coup d'état and terrorist personnel that were supposed to be used to commit assassination attempts against members of the party and government on November 7 in Red Square, during a demonstration of workers.
Sentence and execution
Nikolai Yezhov, whose photo is presented in the article, rejected all charges brought against him and called his lack of diligence in the matter of "cleansing" the security organs as his only mistake.
In his last word at the trial, Yezhov said that he was beaten during the investigation, although he had fought for 25 years and destroyed the enemies of the people. In addition, he said that if he wanted to commit a terrorist act against one of the members of the government, he did not need to recruit anyone, he could just use the appropriate equipment.
After death
About the trial of Yezhov and his shooting, nothing was reported. The only thing noted by an ordinary citizen of the Land of Soviets is the return of the former name to the city of Cherkessk, as well as the disappearance of images of the former People's Commissar from group photographs.
In 1998, Nikolai Yezhov was recognized as not subject to rehabilitation by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The following facts were cited as arguments:
- Yezhov organized a series of murders of persons who were personally objectionable to him;
- He deprived his wife of life, since she could expose his illegal activities, and did everything to extradite this crime for the act of suicide;
- As a result of operations conducted in accordance with the orders of Nikolai Yezhov, over 1.5 million citizens were repressed.
Ezhov Nikolai Ivanovich: personal life
As already mentioned, Antonina Titova was the first wife of the murdered People's Commissar (1897-1988). The couple divorced in 1930 and had no children.
With the second wife - Eugenia (Sulamith) Solomonovna - Ezhov met when she was still married to a diplomat and journalist Alexei Gladun. A young woman soon divorced and became the wife of a promising party functionary.
The couple did not manage to produce their own child, but they adopted an orphan. The girl was called Natalia, and after the suicide of the adoptive mother, which occurred shortly before Yezhov's arrest and his execution, she was in an orphanage.
Now you know who Nikolai Yezhov was, whose biography was typical enough for many employees of the state apparatus of those years, who reached power in the first years of the formation of the USSR and ended their lives just like their victims.
Similar articles
Trending Now