Nikolai Yezhov

Who was Nikolai Yezhov?

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov or Ezhov was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin. He was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the most severe period of Stalin's Great Purge. His time in charge is sometimes known as the "Yezhovshchina", a term coined during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s. After presiding over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge, Yezhov ironically became a victim of it. He was arrested, confessed under torture to a range of anti-Soviet activity, and was executed in 1940. By the beginning of World War II, his status within the Soviet Union became that of a political unperson. Among art historians, he has the nickname "The Vanishing Commissar" because after his execution, his likeness was retouched out of an official press photo; he is among the best known examples of the Soviet press making someone who had fallen out of favor "disappear".