Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940

276 Pages·2002·15.21 MB·English

by  Marc Jansen, Nikita Petrov

viii Illustrations
Ezhovenfamille,1936 122
USSRSupremeSoviet,firstsession,January1938 125
EzhovwithStalinandothers,ontheirwaytoRedSquare,
1May1938 140
Shkiriatov,Ezhov,andFrinovskiiontheirwaytoRedSquare,
1May1938 141
PartyleadersontopoftheLeninMausoleumviewinga
gymnasticparade,24July1938 147
TwophotographsofthePartyleadersontopoftheLenin
Mausoleum,7November1938 162
Beforethefall:EzhovontopoftheLeninMausoleum,
1May1938 196
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Preface
Idon’tknowofanymoreidealfunctionarythanEzhov.After
charginghimwithatask,youdon’thavetocheckuponhim:
hewillaccomplishthemission.Hehasonlyone,indeedessen-
tial,shortcoming—hedoesnotknowwheretostop.
—I.M.Moskvin,1936–37
Ifduringthisoperationanextrathousandpeoplewillbeshot,
thatisnotsuchabigdeal.
—N.I.Ezhov,July1937
Bettertoofarthannotfarenough.
—N.I.Ezhov,October1937
RecentliteratureontheStalinistperiodofSoviethistoryhasdwelt
heavily on the significance and scope of the terror, and historians
are still much divided on both facts and interpretation, but there
is little difference of opinion on the central role of what is now
generally called the Great Terror of 1937–38. In the course of
some fifteen months, approximately 1.5 million people were ar-
rested; almost half of them were executed. The main executor of
this gigantic operation was Stalin’s state security chief of those
years, Nikolai Ezhov.
Untilquiterecently,verylittlewasknownaboutthisman,and
what was known was to a large extent the product of invention.
Itwashardtorealizethat Ezhovhadbeen oneofthesecretpolice
chiefs praised most by Soviet propaganda. The extremely short
lived Ezhov cultus of the years 1937–38 was indeed unprece-
dented. During this period Stalin was very favorably disposed
toward Ezhov; according to Khrushchev, he had a pet name for
The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) has contributed
totherealizationofthisbookwithagranttotheauthors.
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x Preface
him: ezhevichka, ‘‘little bramble.’’1 Stalin put his boundless trust
inEzhov.Hewaspersonallyallowedtoimposedeathsentencesin
the so-called ‘‘national operations,’’ whereas the responsibility to
imposedeathsentences intheoperationwith respecttoorderNo.
00447 was passed on to an even lower level, that is, the regional
NKVDchiefs. SincetheRedTerroryears1918–21, neitherbefore
nor later in Soviet history have there been similar examples. Dur-
ingthe1920sand1930salldeathsentenceswereconfirmedatthe
highest level, that is, by the Politburo. Even Ezhov’s predecessors
Menzhinskii and Iagoda, who had an OGPU Board issuing death
sentences, officially needed prior permission by the Politburo. So
from early 1937 until November 1938 Ezhov was not only the
troubadour but the symbol of the new Soviet terror. His name is
strongly linked to the Great Terror.
His short period of greatness, amounting to only one and a
halfyears,wasfollowedbyasuddencomplete,andwellenforced,
oblivion. Stalin forbade mention even of his name—not, perhaps,
simply because it may have called up unpleasant memories, but
because it annoyed him. For example, in 1949 in a conversation
with Vulko Chervenkov and other Bulgarian leaders, when ex-
plaining how to organize the work of their national Department
of the Interior, Stalin referred to the Soviet experience and in that
connection also mentioned the name of Iagoda; but he kept silent
about Ezhov.2 According to the aircraft designer A. Iakovlev,
some months after his fall Stalin recalled his former favorite with
the words: ‘‘Ezhov was a scoundrel. He ruined our best cadres.
He had morally degenerated.’’3 Stalin seemed to put the burden
of guilt for the terror of 1937–38 on the executors.
The historian analyzing the life and activity of Ezhov is con-
fronted by a great deal of vagueness and inconsistencies. This is
partly a result of the shortcomings of his official biography, pub-
lished in the 1930s, which, as usual with a ‘‘model’’ biography of
aKremlinleader,omittedmuchandfalsifiedwhenconvenient,all
in order to present an exemplary revolutionary career. Biographi-
cal facts were adjusted to the accepted cliche´; all that was consid-
ereddubiousorsuperfluouswascutout,oraltered.AfterEzhov’s
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Preface xi
fall in the late 1930s, the situation was turned upside down: he
was accused of having been a spy, a drunkard, a ‘‘pederast,’’ the
murderer of his wife. Nothing good remained. Stalin’s famous
Short Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party
(Bolsheviks), which began appearing in installments in Pravda in
September 1938, mentions Ezhov just twice—once in connection
with his role during the civil war and again in the verification of
Party documents campaign of the mid-1930s.4 The second edition
omits him altogether.5 From the late 1930s on, Party censorship
banned his works.6 Since then, he has mainly been described in
very negative terms. During the de-Stalinization campaign of the
1950s, the term ezhovshchina was even invented as a synonym for
the bloody purgesof 1936–38, as if it had all been Ezhov’s work.
In the 1990s, the doors of the former Soviet archives were set
ajar. New information on Ezhov’s life and work began to appear.
The authors of the present biography have used the following
hitherto unpublished information to fill the gaps: materials from
Ezhov’s personal file (lichnoe delo) as nomenklatura functionary
of the Party Central Committee apparatus at the Tsentr khrane-
niiasovremennoi dokumentatsii(TsKhSD,*theformer archiveof
the General Department of the CPSU Central Committee); Ezhov’s
papers (fond 57) in the Arkhiv Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii
(APRF, the former Politburo archive), later transferred (as fond
671) to the Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov
noveisheiistorii,orRTsKhIDNI†(theformerCentralPartyArchive,
whereasyettheyhavenotbeencompletelydeclassifiedandareonly
sparselyaccessibletoresearchers;mostofthesematerialshavebeen
studied by the authors when they were still in the Presidential Ar-
chive, as a consequence of which in the notes they refer to this
archive); other documents from the APRF and the RTsKhIDNI;
Ezhov’s interrogation and other documents from the Tsentral’nyi
arkhiv Federal’noi sluzhby bezopasnosti (TsA FSB, the former
*Since 1999 renamed Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii, or
RGANI.
†Since1999renamedRossiiskiigosudarstvennyiarkhivsotsial’no-politicheskoi
istorii,orRGASPI.
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xii Preface
KGBarchive),aswellasfromthearchiveoftheMoscowProvince
FSB Directorate; papers of the People’s Commissariat of Water
Transportation of1938–39 atthe Rossiiskiigosudarstvennyi ark-
hiv ekonomiki (RGAE); and documents from the Gosudarstven-
nyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), all of them in Moscow.
In addition, a number of photographs have been obtained from
the Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv kinofotodokumentov
(RGAKFD) in Krasnogorsk.
A word on the archival investigation cases (arkhivno-sledst-
vennye dela) in the FSB Archive studied by us: they are a unique
source of immense importance. It is true that they contain the
most fantastic confessions of people tortured during interroga-
tion; NKVD officers, for instance, confessed to having taken part
in nonexistent conspiracies, having prepared attempts on the life
of Stalin and other leaders, and so on. However, if handled in a
critical way, such evidence can reveal totally truthful information
about the way of life and mutual relations of the various NKVD
clans,thecharacteroftheNKVDconferencesatwhichcampaigns
of repression were discussed, private conversations of NKVD
leaders,theirreactionstoremarksbyStalinandMolotov—thelist
goes on. Moreover, the truthfulness of such information can be
examined for compatibility with other sources, such as Stalin’s
and Ezhov’s visitors’ registers. Another important source is that
of the stenographic reports of the operational NKVD conferences
of December 1936 and January 1938. Having been the first to
study them, we are able to publish Ezhov’s original words with
respect to the repressions.
It should be pointed out that there may be serious discrepan-
cies with Ezhov’s accepted official biography, which created for
Ezhovatotallyfictitiousrevolutionarypast.Thatworkstates,for
example,that‘‘comradeEzhovpreparedthesoldiersinBelorussia
for the [October 1917] uprising,’’ whereas Ezhov’s role until the
mid-1930s was in fact of rather secondary importance. But we
shallalsocriticallyexamineEzhov’simageintheanti-Stalinisthis-
toriography as ‘‘bloodthirsty dwarf,’’ ‘‘moral and physical
pygmy,’’ or ‘‘bloody degenerate.’’7
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Preface xiii
* * *
Thisbookisacoproductionresearchedandwrittenintwoplaces,
Moscow and Amsterdam. Both authors have participated in all
stages of the work and are fully responsible for the whole text.
Nikita Petrov has traced most of the archival sources, Marc Jan-
sen the published sources; the writing has primarily been done by
Jansen,butalwaysinclosecooperationwithPetrov.Wearemuch
obliged to Shirley Taylor for the constructive and respectful way
in which she has edited our frequently inadequate English, and
we want to thank the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Re-
search (NWO) for their financial support in this respect. We also
thank the Russian institutions mentioned above, together with
their employees, for having made available archival materials for
this study, especially APRF and RGAKFD and its director, Liud-
mila Petrovna Zapriagaeva, as well as the institutions where we
have been able to research published sources, especially the Insti-
tute of Russian and East European Studies of Amsterdam Univer-
sity and the International Institute of Social History, also in
Amsterdam. Moreover, we have made use of documents, photo-
graphs, and information from the archives of Moscow Memori-
al’s Research and Information Center and want to express our
specialgratitudetoArseniiRoginskiiandNikitaOkhotin.Others
we should like to thank for their help in tracing materials, com-
menting on the manuscript or parts of it, and in other ways are
Nanci Adler, Rolf Binner, Alex Lande, and Erik van Ree, as well
asO.Kapchinskii.Theauthorsverymuchappreciatethepractical
help in realizing this book offered by Robert Conquest and Ste-
phen Cohen.
Marc Jansen
Nikita Petrov
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1
Early Career
According to his official biography, Nikolai Ivanovich Ezhov had
the right proletarian origin. He was born on 1 May (19 April,
OS) 1895 in the Russian capital St. Petersburg, the son of a poor
metalworker, a founder. But during interrogation, after his arrest
in April 1939, he stated that he had been born in Mariiampole, a
provincial town in southwest Lithuania, not far from the Polish
border (later Kapsukas) and at that time part of the Russian em-
pire. He had moved to Petersburg only in 1906, when he was
eleven years old. After the revolution he started to assert that he
was born there.
Ezhovalsoconfessedthathisfatherhadnotbeenanindustrial
worker at all. On the contrary, having been called up for military
service, Ivan Ezhov, a Russian from Volkhonshino village in the
Krapivna district to the southwest of Tula, joined a musical de-
tachment in Mariiampole, where he married the conductor’s
maid. After demobilizationhe became a forest warden andthen a
pointsman in the railway service. In 1902–3, according to his
son’swords, hekepta tearoom,infact servingasa brothel. From
1905 to 1914, after the tearoom closed, the elder Ezhov worked
asahousepainter.Evenworsefromtheproletarianpointofview,
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2 Stalin’sLoyalExecutioner
hewasasmallcontractorwho employedtwowagelaborers.Ivan
Ezhov died in 1919, after some years of a debilitating illness.1
Nor did the other half of Nikolai Ezhov’s origins suit later
requirements. His official biography fails to note that his mother,
AnnaAntonovnaEzhova(bornc.1864)—theconductor’smaid—
was Lithuanian. Ezhov himself acknowledged in a questionnaire
in 1924 that since childhood he could make himself understood
inPolishand LithuanianaswellasRussian;three yearslatersuch
origins were no longer appropriate and he stated that he knew
only Russian.2
Ezhov had a sister, Evdokiia, some two years his senior, and
also a brother, Ivan, who was born in 1897 in Veivery, Mariiam-
pole district.3 The two brothers did not get along well. Later, Ni-
kolai told his nephew Viktor, Evdokiia’s son, that Ivan, though
two years younger, beat him up systematically, and once did so
with a guitar in a street fight, an act that Nikolai never forgot. In
1939, during investigation, Nikolai related that before being
called up for the army in 1916, Ivan had belonged to a criminal
gang.4 In the autumn of 1938, in a letter intended for Stalin, he
wrote that his brother had been a ‘‘half-criminal element’’ and
that since childhood he had not maintained any ties with him.5
Nikolai Ezhov attended primary school (probably a parish
school) for no more than a year; according to the data of his later
criminal case, he had an ‘‘unfinished primary education.’’ In
1906, at eleven years of age, he was sent to Petersburg as appren-
tice to a tailor. From 1909 on, he was an apprentice and then a
metalworker at several Petersburg factories. He spent more than
a year in Lithuania and Poland in search of work, holding jobs in
Kovno (later Kaunas), as an apprentice metalworker at the Til’-
mans works, and in other towns as hired help to craftsmen.6
In1914–15hewasemployedinaPetrogradframeworkshop,
the Nedermeier and the Putilov works. At that time he took part
in some strikes and demonstrations. In spite of his lack of school-
ing,hewasratherwellreadandamongworkershadthenickname
‘‘Nicky the booklover’’ (Kol’ka knizhnik).7 In a questionnaire of
the early 1920s he stated that he was ‘‘literate (self-taught).’’8 In
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EarlyCareer 3
connectionwithastrikeattheTreugol’nikfactoryhewasarrested
and exiled from Petrograd. In 1915 (he was then twenty years
old), he was called up for army duty, first in the 76th infantry
depot regiment and then in the 172d infantry Libavskii regiment,
but he was soon wounded on the German front near Alitus (just
to the west of Vilnius) and sent on leave for six months. He re-
turned to the Putilov works. Later in the same year he was called
up again, assigned first as a soldier in the 3d infantry regiment in
Novo-Petergof, and then as a soldier-worker in a noncombatant
detachment in the Dvinsk military district. In 1916 he became a
foreman in the Fifth Artillery Workshop of the Northern Front in
Vitebsk.9
Later, a fellow soldier of those days described how Ezhov
once, in some way having got hold of the right ribbon, had posed
as a holder of the St. George Cross.10 During the 1930s, such an
episode was not, of course, correct form, and this part of Ezhov’s
biography accordingly was painted in the style of revolutionary
romanticism,emphasizingrebelliousnessandpunishment.11Inthe
late1930s, Aleksandr Fadeevwas commissionedto writeEzhov’s
biography. He fulfilled the task, and the manuscript of a small
book went to the publishing house. Although Ezhov was arrested
before the biography could be printed,12 part of Fadeev’s manu-
script was preserved among Ezhov’s papers, under the title ‘‘Ni-
kolai Ivanovich Ezhov: Child of Indigence and Struggle’’ (1937–
38). ‘‘He was a small, dark-haired young man, with an open and
stubborn face, with a sudden boyish smile and adroit precise
movementsofhis smallhands,’’Fadeevwrote.Hegoes ontosay:
He was a small Petersburg workman, very restrained and mod-
est,withaclear,calm,andfirmlookfromunderhisdark,beau-
tiful eyebrows. He loved reading and poetry and now and then
scribbled a few lines himself. He was a thoughtful and cordial
friend, a good chap, in leisure time loving to play the guitar, to
sing and dance, fearless in front of the authorities. Among his
comradesheenjoyedagreatdealofloveandinfluence.13
Rather a similar description was that of A. Drizul, who knew
Ezhov as a fellow workman at the artillery workshop No. 5. In
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4 Stalin’sLoyalExecutioner
N.I.Ezhov(right),Vitebsk,1916.(Memorialcollection)
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