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Nikolai Yezhov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1895. Just five foot tall with a crippled leg, Yezhov was nicknamed the "Dwarf". Yezhov joined the Bolsheviks after the February Revolution. He joined the Red Army during the Civil War and by 1927 was a close associate of Joseph Stalin.

In September, 1936, Yezhov replaced Genrikh Yagoda as head of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). Yezhov quickly arranged the arrest of all the leading political figures in the Soviet Union who were critical of Stalin.

Nadezhda Khazina and her husband, Osip Mandelstam, met him after his appointment: "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... We first met Yezhov in the 1930s when Mandelstam and I were staying in a Government villa in Sukhumi. 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 was a modest and rather agreeable person. He was not yet used to being driven about in an automobile and did not therefore regard it as an exclusive privilege to which no ordinary mortal could lay claim. We sometimes asked him to get him to get a lift into town, and he never refused."

The NKVD broke prisoners down by intense interrogation. This included the threat to arrest and execute members of the prisoner's family if they did not confess. The interrogation went on for several days and nights and eventually they became so exhausted and disoriented that they signed confessions agreeing that they had been attempting to overthrow the government.

In 1937 Yezhov arranged the arrest of Genrikh Yagoda, the former head of the NKVD. He was charged with Nickolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Nikolai Krestinsky and Christian Rakovsky being involved with Leon Trotsky in a plot against Joseph Stalin. They were all found guilty and were eventually executed.

Joseph Stalin now became suspicious of Yezhov and in December, 1938, he was replaced by Lavrenti Beria. Nikolai Yezhov was arrested and was probably executed in 1939.

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(1) Nadezhda Khazina, the wife of Osip Mandelstam, who died while in a NKVD labour camp, wrote about Nikolai Yezhov in her book, Hope Against Hope (1970)

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." What they meant was: "Thank God, it looks as though I've escaped. But then there would be a new wave, and the same people would rush to heap abuse on the "enemies of the people."

We first met Yezhov in the 1930s when Mandelstam and I were staying in a Government villa in Sukhumi. 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.

Yezhov was a modest and rather agreeable person. He was not yet used to being driven about in an automobile and did not therefore regard it as an exclusive privilege to which no ordinary mortal could lay claim. We sometimes asked him to get him to get a lift into town, and he never refused.

(2) Victor Serge, was a close friend of Boris Pilnyak in the early 1930s. He wrote about him and Nikolai Yezhov in his book Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1945)

Boris Pilnyak was writing The Volga Flows into the Caspian Sea. 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.