Customer Reviews

Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940 (HOOVER INST PRESS PUBLICATION)

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Not much is known about Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Ezhov, depending on how you like to write it), and until more archival material becomes available years from now, this book is likely to be the best consolidated source available on Yagoda's successor as Nachalnik NKVD.

The authors thankfully didn't spend too much time speculating and postulating on Yezhov's early life (for which there isn't much documentation). They focused much of the book on the early 1930's through Yezhov's downfall at the end of the decade, as I'd expected and hoped for. There are some interesting facts and accounts of Yezhov's formative adult years, but the authors, for the sake of accuracy and at the expense of novelistic character construction, devoted most of their concise book to studying the five foot one inch murderer from the time he gained prominence in the NKVD and Party apparatus.

The book deals with the Great Purge very comprehensively, detailing the categorized method with which the Politburo leadership decided to either kill or deport millions of people in the name of counter-sabotage, counterterrorism, counter-espionage, and the usual charge of affiliation to a Zinoviev-Trotsky conspiracy. The authors remind us that this human tragedy wasn't confined to Communist Party, Soviet military, intelligence, or police circles...it extended to "national operations": the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Koreans, Chinese, Estonians, Latvians, Germans, Poles, and rehabilitated kulaks returning from exile. The arbitrary nature with which all of these people were slaughtered or uprooted shows what can happen when a country's judiciary is co-opted by a gang of rabid criminals and sadists.

A minor detraction to this book is its perfunctory prose. If you don't find the Stalin years fascinating, you might find yourself struggling through certain clunky areas in the book. The authors never fail to delude one with names, i.e: regional Party or NKVD chiefs, Yezhov's deputies and subordinates, and certain fellows with whom the Chief had more than a drinking relationship. These details are great for the afficionado, but I assume they would overwhelm the casual reader.

I started reading this book with the central question: was Yezhov simply a malleable bishop of General Secretary Stalin, or was he a murderer without conscience, put to practical use by the terror of Tiflis? I finished the book without answering the question. This in no way detracts from the value of this work, as I learned a great deal; it simply proves there are a great many things about Yezhov that we don't yet know, and probably won't learn in many years, if ever. Lest I equivocate, my own conclusion of Yezhov is that he was a pusillanimous killer who betrayed and murdered far too many persons to ever be shown the light of historical rehabilitation. That said, Stalin is by far the most malign of these criminals, and after reading this book, it is not inconceivable to think that many of Yezhov's crimes were committed with the child-like hope of pleasing Uncle Iosif. One doesn't become chief of the NKVD without sacrificing all morals and human decency. Just ask Dzerzhinsky, Yagoda, and Beria.

BG

Jansen and Petrov's biography tells everything worthwhile likely to be known about N. I. Yezhov, Commissar of the NKVD (Stalin's secret police) during the Great Purge of 1936-38. It also summarizes the mechanics and motivation of the Purge itself, using extensive Russian-language sources emerging since 1988.

In some ways Yezhov was more a pathetic than an evil character, unfortunately falling under the spell of a brilliant but evil man. Good-natured and helpful before getting drawn into Stalin's work of repression, Yezhov would degenerate into a torturer and murderer, incapable of distinguishing true from imaginary charges.

The book is a bit dry in places, but that is a hazard of the subject: relatively little "human" detail is known about Yezhov. (Aleksei Polyansky's Russian-language biography tried to get around this problem by inventing dialogue.) Yezhov and his close associates were nearly all liquidated in 1939-1940; those who survived knew they should keep silent. Indeed, apart from some generic execration, Yezhov would remain taboo until the age of Glasnost' (1988), 48 years after his death.

This book is a great addition to the story of Soviet communism, a story that is still unfolding, but has not completely been told. This book will remain the authoritative source of the life and times of Nikolai Yezhov, until the Russian Archives are once again fully opened to scholars. In revealing the life of Nikolai Yezhov, this concise tome also recounts the political times, and more importantly, the moral degeneracy of the Soviet leadership, the communist party, the secret police- the Soviet state itself, rotting from its own evil communist ideology and moral perversion.

The Great Terror of 1937-38 was an outstanding period in the chronicles of the USSR because the vast majority of the victims were not only communist, but Stalinists, who allegedly had not been sufficiently vigilant in finding "enemies of the people" in their midst. In other words, they had not been vigilant communists, and had not informed and found sufficient innocent victims, purportedly potential opponents to Stalin's supreme authority.

Moreover, Stalin had decided to get rid of the old Bolsheviks and Chekists, who he no longer "trusted" or stood in the way of his revisionist history of Soviet communism, a history in which only Comrade Stalin stood shoulder to shoulder with the great Lenin.

The story of the police state, political assassinations, arrests in the middle of the night, the use of systematic torture and generalized terror, we must keep in mind, all began with Vladimir Lenin. And we must remember that "permanent revolution" was invented by Leon Trotsky; the use of concentration camps, the implementation of "revolutionary terror," the extermination of "class enemies," and the founding of the political police, the legendary, ruthless Cheka, were all instituted by the totalitarian state- not by Stalin or Yezhov- but by the father of the October Revolution, himself, Vladimir I. Lenin. The Red Terror of 1918-1922, in which thousands perished was primarily the work of "Iron Feliks" Dzerzhinsky, Red Army Commissar LeonTrotsky, and the Starik of Russian communism, Lenin- not Stalin or Yezhov.

By 1936 Stalin needed a younger NKVD chief, who was personally loyal to him and would not hesitate to exterminate what remained of the legendary old Bolsheviks, such as the "leftist Trotskyites, Kamenev and Zinoviev; the "party swamp," Radek, Pyatakov, and "their followers"; and the "rightist bloc," Bukharin, Rykov, etc, who, in Stalin's mind still posed a threat to his authority. A younger, loyal, amoral communist comrade, Nikolai Yezhov, was just the man Stalin needed to accomplish such a horrendous task, after the assassination of Leningrad Party chief, Sergey Kirov, in December 1934. For the time being, Yezhov would assist Yagoda in the investigations,interrogations, and the gathering of evidence.

Genrikh Yagoda had been a bloody NKVD chief, but he had not acted fast enough during the Great Purge, according to Stalin, in exposing and exterminating the (concocted) Trotskyite-Zinovievite-Bukharinite conspiracy.

Using torture and threats, Yezhov extracted the needed confessions from the old Bolsheviks, and pleasing Stalin with his results and methods, soon enough, he would displaced Yagoda as chief of the NKVD. Yezhov performed his bloody symphony of terror satisfactorily and completely as required by Stalin, the great conductor. (Later this period in 1950s would be labeled the "Yezhovshchina," as if to make Yezhov, alone, responsible for the atrocities and "excesses" of the great purges.)

And when the task was completed (which it was in about 18 months), Stalin knew enough about expediency to get rid of the now completely alcoholic, sexually perverted, and morally degenerate Yezhov. And Stalin need not worry; there was always someone available to pick up the pieces and assume the mantle of NKVD chief. The next NKVD chief, Lavrentii Beria, followed Yezhov; just like Yezhov (1936-1938) had followed in the footsteps of Genrikh Yagoda (1934-1936). As new NKVD chief, Beria rounded up, purged and exterminated all of Yezhov's appointees and brought his "Georgia Gang" to power- staying in power with his intelligence, cunning, and loyalty, virtually until Stalin's death in 1953.

Yagoda and Yezhov, and much later Beria, would all end up with a bullet to the back of the skull, the standard treatment for Soviet scapegoats as well as "traitors."

Yezhov fell from power because he was no longer needed; in fact, he had done an excellent job fulfilling and exceeding the quotas of victims set by Stalin in eliminating enemies of the people in all regions of Russia and captive nationalities- from the top of the Soviet hierarchy in the communist party, the security organs (the political police, NKVD), the military, and the regional and district nomemklatura to the lower echelons of Soviet society.

Nikolai Yezhov was not created in a vacuum; he was a product of the evil philosophy of communism in the USSR, forced collectivism under Stalin, just like the "Gang of Four" was a product of Red Chinese communism under the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong, or the mass extermination of his own population by Pol Pot in Cambodia. The book is a portrait of evil, only that it encompasses many faces. I recommend this book to all students of Russian Communist history without reservations. The book also has a good index, notes, and rare illustrations.

Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D. is the author of Cuba in Revolution: Escape From a Lost Paradise (2002). He has published extensively on Stalin and Soviet communism.

I read this book in order to answer some questions about the Stalin era leaders.Was Yezhov a bloody tyrant as depicted everywhere in Western oriented publications or he was intentionally shown like that? The truth about the leaders during the creation of socialism (1920s and 1930s) is that they had learned everthing by trial and error and they were truly idealistic in their intents. The problem is that when you are over zealous you are easily carried away to either extreme; that is to

right-wing like Buharin or left-wing like Trotsky. I do not think the chiefs of NKVD were bloody criminals, they were believing in a cause and in a hostile environment when the enemy was attacking them they were defending socialism. My comment on Yezhov after readig the book changed.In spite of the one-sidedness of the book I try to seek the unsaid and the confessed truths by the writer. Yezhov was a loyal communist who believed in socialism but was overwhelmed by the nasty job he was asked to perform.No credit to comments of being a blood thirsty tyrant or a rapist etc...