by Jared Stehr
Published 2 years ago
Updated 2 years ago
Yezhov ordered the NKVD to sprinkle mercury on the curtains of his office so that the physical evidence could be collected and used to support the charge that Yagoda was a German spy, sent to assassinate Yezhov and Stalin with poison and restore capitalism.
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When did Yezhov became head of the NKVD?
In October 1937 he became a candidate member of the Politburo. Meanwhile, on September 26, 1936, he had succeeded Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda as chief of the NKVD, and in January 1937 he had acquired the newly created title of general commissar of state security.
What did Beria do?
Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after the war. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he was responsible for organizing purges such as the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and officials.
Why was Khrushchev removed from power?
By the early 1960s however, Khrushchev's popularity was eroded by flaws in his policies, as well as his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This emboldened his potential opponents, who quietly rose in strength and deposed him in October 1964.
What caused Stalin's death?
He died suddenly in early March 1953 after a short illness, which was described in a series of medical bulletins in the Soviet newspaper Pravda. Based on both the clinical history and autopsy findings, it was concluded that Stalin had died of a massive hemorrhagic stroke involving his left cerebral hemisphere.
What did the NKVD do?
NKVD activities. The main function of the NKVD was to protect the state security of the Soviet Union. This role was accomplished through massive political repression, including authorised murders of many thousands of politicians and citizens, as well as kidnappings, assassinations and mass deportations.
Did Stalin's daughter have a defect?
In 1967, she caused an international furore when she defected to the United States and, in 1978, became a naturalized citizen. From 1984 to 1986, she briefly returned to the Soviet Union and had her Soviet citizenship reinstated. Until her death in 2011, she was Stalin's last surviving child.
Who were the KGB and what was their role?
The KGB was responsible for foreign intelligence, domestic counterintelligence, technical intelligence, protection of the political leadership, and the security of the Soviet Union's frontiers.
8 hours ago
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell from Stalin's favour and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including …
13 hours ago
Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell from Stalin’s favour, was arrested and executed in 1940.
1 hours ago
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈɫaj jɪˈʐof]; May 1, 1895 – February 4, 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the most active period of the Great Purge. Having presided over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge, Yezhov eventually fell from Stalin's favour and power.
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During interrogation, Yezhov implicated dozens of his family members and personal acquaintances for supposed counterrevolutionary activities, and hundreds were killed in the ensuing purge. In February 1940 Yezhov became a victim of the trial process that he had helped create, and he was executed that month.
13 hours ago
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture and executions during the Great Purge but fell from Stalin's favour and was arrested, confessing after torture to a range of anti-Soviet activity. He was executed in 1940 …
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In November 1937, Yezhov was to kill a former friend, A. I. Yakovlev. As he faced the firing squad, Yakovlev addressed Yezhov: “Nikolai Ivanovich! I can see it in your eyes that you feel pity for me”. Yezhov, momentarily confused, did not answer, but after this brief hesitation swiftly ordered his men to pull the trigger.
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At the same time, the “bloody dwarf” was married twice and, according to eyewitnesses, loved second wife so much that even Stalin was not able to separate them. And for the love of it paid with his life. First wife. Nikolai Yezhov was a sickly young man. He was of those about whom they say “meter with a cap”: the growth, he was a meter ...
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The first name after Stalin’s own, a point energetically made by Nikolai Yezhov’s daughter* in her fruitless post-Soviet attempts to rehabilitate the man. But clearing a fellow’s name is a tough task when that name is the mother tongue’s very metonym for political persecution: the Soviet Union’s mind-bending late-1930s witch hunt for ...
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Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian, like Stalin, who called him ‘my Himmler’. Involved in revolutionary activities from his teens and head of the secret police in Georgia in his twenties, he supervised the ruthless 1930s purges in the region and arrived in Moscow in 1938 as deputy to Nikolai Yezhov, ‘the blood-thirsty dwarf’, head of the Soviet secret police.
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A few days after his coronation in 1894, nearly 1,400 of his subjects died during a huge stampede. They had gathered on a large field in Moscow to receive coronation gifts and souvenirs, but the ...
