Why was nikolai yezhov killed

He was charged with denigration of the Soviet Union's leaders, anti-Soviet propaganda and criminal negligence. Who was the head of the NKVD? Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov. How did Stalin died in ? Cerebral Hemorrhage. What was wrong with Stalin's arm? When Stalin was twelve, he was seriously injured after having been hit by a phaeton. He was hospitalised in Tiflis for several months, and sustained a lifelong disability to his left arm.

When did Khrushchev say we will bury you? What was Joseph Stalin best known for? When did Stalin come to power? In the years following the death of Vladimir Lenin in , Stalin rose to become the leader of the Soviet Union. What type of turtles are edible? We sat and waited. There was not even flippant conversation. Finally he arrived. He, too, was in uniform. Though he had little glitter, still it was obvious that he was of a higher rank than my two companions. He was a man of about thirty-five, a Georgian, and fairly good looking in a foreign kind of way; to me, from the very first second, he was despicable.

He took a seat on the other side of the room from me, crossed his legs, pulled out a heavy gold tabatiere, slowly tapped a cigarette on it - scrutinizing me throughout the process. Then he said in Russian what amounted to, Let her talk. Zarubin told Hede Massing, "Tell your story, and I will interpret. I'm tired of my story. I understood that I was brought here to ask this gentleman for my exit visa. All I am concerned with at this point is that my husband and I be able to leave for home.

I've told my story time and again; I am sure that Mr. X can have access to it. So all I have to say now is - when am I going to leave? I mimicked his laugh and said, 'It is not that funny, is it? I mean what I say! Simon Sebag Montefiore commented: "Stalin may have wanted a Caucasian, perhaps convinced that the cut-throat traditions of the mountains - blood feuds, vendettas and secret murders - suited the position.

Beria was a natural, the only First Secretary who personally tortured his victims. The blackjack - the zhgtrti - and the truncheon - the dubenka - were his favourite toys. He was hated by many of the Old Bolsheviks and family members around the leader.

With the whispering, plotting and vengeful Beria at his side, Stalin felt able to destroy his own polluted, intimate world. Robert Service , the author of Stalin: A Biography has argued: "Yezhov understood the danger he was in and his daily routine became hectic; he knew that the slightest mistake could prove fatal. Somehow, though, he had to show himself to Stalin as indispensable.

Beria had until then been First Secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia; he was widely feared in the south Caucasus as a devious plotter against any rival - and almost certainly he had poisoned one of them, the Abkhazian communist leader Nestor Lakoba, in December If Yezhov tripped, Beria was ready to take his place; indeed Beria would be more than happy to trip Yezhov up.

Daily collaboration with Beria was like being tied in a sack with a wild beast. The strain on Yezhov became intolerable. He took to drinking heavily and turned for solace to one-night stands with women he came across; and when this failed to satiate his needs, he pushed himself upon men he encountered in the office or at home. In so far as he was able to secure his future position, he started to gather compromising material on Stalin himself Such measures spelled doom for Yezhov.

He drank more heavily. He turned to more boyfriends for sexual gratification. Yezhov was arrested on 10th April, It is claimed by the authors of Stalin's Loyal Executioner that Yezhov quickly confessed under torture to being an "enemy of the people".

This included a confession that he was an homosexual. In the period of the Yezhov terror - the mass arrests came in waves of varying intensity - there must sometimes have been no more room in the jails, and to those of us still free it looked as though the highest wave had passed and the terror was abating. After each show trial, people sighed, "Well, it's all over at last. But then there would be a new wave, and the same people would rush to heap abuse on the "enemies of the people.

It is hard to credit that we sat at the same table, eating, drinking and exchanging small talk with this man who was to be one of the great killers of our time, and who totally exposed - not in theory but in practice - all the assumptions on which our "humanism" rested. Yezhov had a limp, and I remember Podvoiski, who liked to lecture people about the qualities of a true Bolshevik, scolding me for my laziness and telling me to follow the example of Yezhov who danced the gopak despite his lame leg.

On his work-table I saw manuscripts under revision. It had been suggested to him that, to avoid banishment from Soviet literature, he should remodel Forest of the Isles, that 'counter-revolutionary' tale of his, into a novel agreeable to the Central Committee. The body's Cultural Section had assigned him a co-author who, page by page, would ask him to suppress this and add that. The helpmate's name was Yezhov, and a high career awaited him, followed by a violent death: this was the successor to Yagoda as head of the GPU.

When Yagoda contrived Kirov's death he had not realized that the Leader was thinking on the grand scale. He had envisaged no more than the removal of a single dangerous figure around whom hostile forces were beginning to rally. The Leader had not initiated him into his cosmic plan. As a result, Yagoda hurried to arrest priests, ex-landowners, and so on, intending to lay Kirov's murder at the door of the usual culprits, the class enemy. Even the astute Radek missed the point, and started writing about the hand of the Gestapo killing a loyal Stalinist.

The Boss had to point out to Yagoda precisely where the main blow should fall: among the Zinovievites. Yagoda was too set in his ways and remained unconvinced. The Boss saw that he would never overcome his pious inhibitions when faced with the Leninist old guard. So he harnessed him to a diminutive fellow with a quiet voice, one Nikolai Yezhov, the chairman of the Party Control Commission.

Molotov described Yezhov as "Bolshevik from before the Revolution, worker by origin, never in any of the oppositions, Central Committee Secretary for some years, good reputation. Secret file , in the archive of the former KGB, contains a curriculum vitae of this person of "good reputation":. Bom May 1, Resident in Moscow, Kremlin.

Social origin - worker. Education - incomplete primary In tried by military tribunal and sentenced to imprisonment for one year. The Boss had first seen Yezhov during his excursion to Siberia to speed up grain deliveries and had subsequently introduced him into the apparatus of the Central Committee. Yezhov was typical of those who rose from nowhere to high positions in this period: semiliterate, obedient, and hardworking.

At the height of the Terror Yezhov would be portrayed on thousands of posters as a giant in whose hands enemies of the people writhed and breathed their last.

In the Central Asian republics, poets regularly described him as the batyr epic hero. The epic hero was in reality a tiny man, almost a dwarf, with a feeble voice. Like Zhdanov, Malenkov, and others whom the Boss would from now on co-opt to the highest offices, Yezhov was merely a pseudonym for Stalin himself, a pathetic puppet, there simply to carry out orders.

While Yezhov familiarized himself with the way things were going, kept an eye on Yagoda, and gave him a prod when necessary, the Boss was drumming the plot of his thriller into the heads of his closest associates. And that is why afterward Bukharin said, "Two days after the murder Stalin sent for me and announced that the assassin, Nikolaev, was a Zinovievite.

Yezhov, the new Chairman of the KGB, was known to Orlov mainly by reputation, although they had met several times at various social events with mutual friends. Their relationship was superficial at best, yet Orlov had a definite disliking for the man, feeling that he displayed attitudes of petty jealousy and resentment towards his peers for the obvious reason that he was not intelligent and was conscious of this deficiency.

According to design historian Peter King, who uncovered thousands of doctored photos and their original versions, the work was not performed in one location or even through an official ministry.

Orders were followed, quietly. Sometimes, photo doctoring meant going back to the past to change the historical record, as when Stalin ordered Leon Trotsky , once a leading figure in the Communist Party, eliminated from all photos. After Trotsky was exiled by Stalin for mounting a failed opposition to his leadership, the revolutionary was snipped, airbrushed and covered up in countless photographs.

Sometimes, Stalin inserted himself in photos at key moments in history, or had photo technicians make him look taller or more handsome. Even citizens had to get in on the act. They learned to deface their own materials with scissors or ink. The famous photo of Soviet soldiers over Reichstag during the Battle of Berlin, which was later revealed to be staged and altered. As historian Jan Plamper notes, the omnipresent portraits of Stalin that were in every home and business were subject to maniacal oversight.

The dictator commissioned an army of painters to create his official portraits, offering some artists massive amounts of money to paint him. This now iconic photo was staged it was inspired by the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. Stalin had ordered his soldiers not to loot—so the watches would have caused the soldiers to be disciplined and, perhaps, killed.