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See Also

See Also in
Notorious Lives

Lavrenty Beria

Felix Dzerzhinsky

Joseph Stalin

Vasili Vasilievich Ulrikh

Andrey Vyshinsky

Genrikh Yagoda.

Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives

Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov

by Leigh Husband Kimmel

Head of Soviet secret police (1936-1938)

Cause of notoriety: Yezhov carried out the Great Purges of the Communist Party and of Soviet citizens accused of opposing Joseph Stalin’s rule until he himself came under suspicion and was killed for treason and espionage following a show trial.

Active: 1936-1938

Locale: Former Soviet Union, particularly Moscow

Sentence: Death

Early Life

According to his official biography, Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov (NIHK-oh-li ee-VAH-noh-vitch yeh-ZHOFF) was born in St. Petersburg on May 1, 1895. Some believe that he may in fact have been born as early as 1892, likely in the area of Suwałki, a town on the border of Poland and Lithuania. Although his official biography claimed that he was of purely Russian ethnic origin, his mother was apparently Polish or Lithuanian, and Yezhov was able to speak some Polish and Lithuanian. Later, as the xenophobia of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin began to color Soviet life, Yezhov would disavow knowing any language except Russian.

Yezhov’s education was spotty at best, described in his Communist Party documents as elementary and incomplete. However, he was a determined autodidact, and his extensive reading resulted in his being labeled with the nickname Kol’ka Knizhnik, or Nicky the Bookworm. He held various lowly positions in St. Petersburg’s industries and began to experiment sexually with both men and women. During World War I, his small stature (five feet, one inch) and fragile health led to his being exempted from service in the czar’s army; however, he later obtained the ribbon for a St. George Cross and passed himself off as a war veteran.

Political Career

After service as a radio technician in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War (1918-1922), Yezhov spent several years moving from one position to another, always with good reports about the energy with which he tackled each assignment. People recalled him as a shy but personable young man, fond of singing and hardly the monster he later became.

By the early 1930’s, Stalin took a personal interest in Yezhov. In 1936, Yezhov was made assistant to Genrikh Yagoda, head of the Soviet secret police, and placed in charge of the work of arranging the first two show trials, or legal proceedings of political opponents of Stalin during the Great Purge. Yezhov also purged the rank and file of the secret police. Finally, Yagoda was accused of deliberately slowing the progress of the purges and was sentenced to death in the last of the three show trials.

Throughout 1937, Yezhov, serving as chief of the secret police, brought the Great Terror to a frantic peak known as the Yezhovshchina, or “Yezhov-thing.” Soviet citizens were being arrested and shot for the flimsiest of reasons. Yezhov often prepared lists of people to be executed on random scraps of paper rather than official stationery of the Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD; the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs). He also began to drink so heavily that it affected his ability to work. He was said to spend the entire morning drinking in his Lubyanka office.

By 1938, the purges had reached the point that the Soviet Union was teetering on the brink of disaster. In the fields of science and industry, so many trained specialists had been eliminated that there was literally no one left who understood how to operate the equipment. Officials began to realize that the purges had to be slowed down before the country fell apart. Stalin brought in Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, a fellow man of the Caucasus, as Yezhov’s assistant. Yezhov immediately recognized a scenario eerily similar to that which had taken place between Yagoda and him in 1936: Yezhov had been appointed Yagoda’s assistant until Yagoda was killed for impeding with the purges. Yezhov now went to Beria with his fears of impending execution, apparently not realizing that Beria despised him and relished the opportunity to destroy him. In April, 1938, Yezhov was made commisar of water transportation, which he recognized as a demotion and a prelude to destruction. He spent the next year in a diminished position, spending entire meetings silently folding paper airplanes and flying them, then retrieving them from under chairs.

The last publicly acknowledged act of Yezhov occurred on April 19, 1939, a day on which he signed three orders as People’s Commissar of Water Transportation. The next day, he vanished from public view. Perhaps Stalin did not want to publicize that a second secret police chief had been found an enemy of the people. As a result, many people suggested that Yezhov had been spared and allowed to live out his natural life under a false name. In fact, he was imprisoned until February 2, 1940, at which time he was given a brief and perfunctory trial as a “spy” by Vasili Vasilievich Ulrikh, Stalin’s hanging judge, and shot that evening.

Impact

Along with prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky and military judge Vasili Vasilievich Ulrikh, Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov was one of the men most responsible for the mass murders of the Great Terror. He purged heedlessly, hoping to impress Stalin with his zeal and thus preserve his own life. However, in the end, he outwitted himself, destroying so many people that the terror had to be brought to a halt before it rendered the Soviet Union unable to function; Yezhov was removed from power and executed. The sheer viciousness of Yezhov’s action, however, had allowed Stalin to shift the blame for his crimes onto Yezhov, a deception that proved so successful that Soviets often complained that if Stalin only knew what was going on, he would put a stop to it.

Further Reading

1 

Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. A post-glasnost reissuing of the most authoritative volume on the era.

2 

Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Includes information on Stalin’s use of Yezhov and other henchmen to run the Great Terror while deflecting attention from himself.

3 

Rayfield, Donald. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. New York: Random House, 2004. A study of the relationship between Stalin and his chief henchmen.

4 

Rogovin, Vadim Z. 1937: Stalin’s Year of Terror. Translated by Frederick S. Choate. Oak Park, Mich.: Mehring Books, 1998. A Trotskyist perspective on the Great Terror.

5 

Vaksberg, Arkady. Stalin’s Prosecutor: The Life of Andrei Vyshinsky. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990. Provides information on Yezhov’s role in the Moscow Trials as related to that of Vyshinsky.

Citation Types

MLA 9th
Kimmel, Leigh Husband. "Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov." Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives, edited by Carl L. Bankston III, Salem Press, 2007. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLN_1625.
APA 7th
Kimmel, L. H. (2007). Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov. In C. L. Bankston III (Ed.), Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Kimmel, Leigh Husband. "Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov." Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2007. Accessed September 17, 2026. online.salempress.com.